Temporal Variability of Oral Microbiota over 10 Months and the Implications for Future Epidemiologic Studies

Background: Few studies have prospectively evaluated the association between oral microbiota and health outcomes. Precise estimates of the intrasubject microbial metric stability will allow better study planning. Therefore, we conducted a study to evaluate the temporal variability of oral microbiota.

Methods: Forty individuals provided six oral samples using the OMNIgene ORAL kit and Scope mouthwash oral rinses approximately every two months over 10 months. DNA was extracted using the QIAsymphony and the V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene was amplified and sequenced using the MiSeq. To estimate temporal variation, we calculated intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) for a variety of metrics and examined stability after clustering samples into distinct community types using Dirichlet multinomial models (DMMs).

Results: The ICCs for the alpha diversity measures were high, including for number of observed bacterial species [0.74; 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.65–0.82 and 0.79; 95% CI: 0.75–0.94] from OMNIgene ORAL and Scope mouthwash, respectively. The ICCs for the relative abundance of the top four phyla and beta diversity matrices were lower. Three clusters provided the best model fit for the DMM from the OMNIgene ORAL samples, and the probability of remaining in a specific cluster was high (59.5%–80.7%).

Conclusions: The oral microbiota appears to be stable over time for multiple metrics, but some measures, particularly relative abundance, were less stable.

Impact: We used this information to calculate stability-adjusted power calculations that will inform future field study protocols and experimental analytic designs. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 27(5); 594–600. ©2018 AACR.

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