In-vivo shift of the microbiota in oral biofilm in response to frequent sucrose consumption

Annette Carola Anderson,Lamprini Karygianni,Markus Jörg Altenburger,Elmar Hellwig,Johan Peter Woelber,Michael Rothballer,Ali Al-Ahmad,Ilias Lagkouvardos

doi:10.1038/s41598-018-32544-6

Abstract

Caries is associated with shifts of microbiota in dental biofilms and primarily driven by frequent sucrose consumption. Data on environmentally induced in vivo microbiota shifts are scarce therefore we investigated the influence of frequent sucrose consumption on the oral biofilm. Splint systems containing enamel slabs were worn for 3 × 7 days with 7-day intervals to obtain oral biofilm samples. After a three-month dietary change of sucking 10 g of sucrose per day in addition to the regular diet, biofilm was obtained again at the end of the second phase. The microbiota was analysed using Illumina MiSeq amplicon sequencing (v1-v2 region). In addition, roughness of the enamel surface was measured with laser scanning microscopy. The sucrose phase resulted in significant differences in beta-diversity and significantly decreased species richness. It was marked by a significant increase in abundance of streptococci, specifically Streptococcus gordonii, Streptococcus parasanguinis and Streptococcus sanguinis. Enamel surface roughness began to increase, reflecting initial impairment of dental enamel surface. The results showed that frequent sucrose consumption provoked compositional changes in the microbiota, leading to an increase of non-mutans streptococci, hence supporting the extended ecological plaque hypothesis and emphasizing the synergy of multiple bacterial species in the development of caries.

Highlights

Caries, or tooth decay, presents a major health concern worldwide, affecting 2.4 billion people, resulting in high treatment costs[1]
It has been shown that dental plaque of healthy subjects can contain high proportions of S. mutans while at the same time caries can occur in the absence of S. mutans[6,11]
Various other bacterial species have been shown to be associated with different stages of caries, e.g. non-mutans streptococci, such as S. salivarius, S. parasanguinis and Actinomyces

Summary

Introduction

Tooth decay, presents a major health concern worldwide, affecting 2.4 billion people, resulting in high treatment costs[1]. According to the extended ecological plaque hypothesis, changes in the local environment, e.g. frequent carbohydrate availability, assumedly favor certain representatives of the oral biofilm and lead to a distinct shift in the microbiota composition towards a higher proportion of acidogenic and acid-tolerant species[4,5,6]. Even though this hypothesis is widely accepted, the detailed microbial etiology remains a main focus of caries research and has not yet been fully clarified. These approaches seem especially useful considering that an estimated 50% of the oral taxa are considered as yet uncultivated[3]

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