Abstract
The human commensal microbiome has been suggested to be involved in the regulation of response to anticancer therapies. However, little is known regarding changes in commensal microbes in patients with cancer during radiation therapy. We conducted a prospective, longitudinal proof-of-concept cohort study with patients with newly diagnosed nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) who underwent radiation therapy-based treatment. Nasopharyngeal swabs were collected before radiation therapy, twice per week during radiation therapy, and after radiation therapy. The nasopharyngeal microbiome was assessed using 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing. A patient's response to treatment was measured 3 months after the completion of radiation therapy as a short-term clinical outcome. In total, 39 NPC patients with 445 nasopharyngeal samples were analyzed. There was stable temporal change in the community structure of the nasopharyngeal microbiome among patientswith NPC during treatment (P = .0005). Among 73 abundant amplicon sequence variants (ASVs), 7 ASVs assigned to genusCorynebacterium decreased significantly during the treatment (W-statistic >80%); 23 ASVs showed statisticallysignificantchanges in the ratio of abundance between early and late responders during treatment (false discovery rate <0.05). This study addressed stable temporal change in the nasopharyngeal microbiome among patients with NPC during radiation therapy-based treatment and provided preliminary evidence of an association with a short-term clinical outcome.
Highlights
The human commensal microbiome has been suggested to be involved in the regulation of response to anticancer therapies in patients with cancer.[1,2,3] Accumulating evidence suggests that the microbiome can substantially affect the effectiveness of chemotherapy and immunotherapy.[4,5] Currently, there is growing interest in revealing the potential change in commensal microbiome among patients undergoing radiation therapy.[2,3] A previous study reported that oral microbial community among patients with cancer altered progressively during radiation therapy.[6]
We aimed to evaluate the trajectory of the nasopharyngeal microbiome throughout the treatment course and to explore a potential association between the path and patients’ clinical outcome
Twenty-seven patients (69.2%) with complete response (CR) at the first clinical check-up were defined as early responders, and the remaining 12 nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) patients were defined as late responders
Summary
The human commensal microbiome has been suggested to be involved in the regulation of response to anticancer therapies in patients with cancer.[1,2,3] Accumulating evidence suggests that the microbiome can substantially affect the effectiveness of chemotherapy and immunotherapy.[4,5] Currently, there is growing interest in revealing the potential change in commensal microbiome among patients undergoing radiation therapy.[2,3] A previous study reported that oral microbial community among patients with cancer altered progressively during radiation therapy.[6] Miguel et al suggested that low bacterial diversity in the gut microbiome was associated with late radiation enteropathy in patients who received pelvic radiation therapy.[7] there are still few well-designed longitudinal studies looking at the change in microbiome during radiation therapy.[2,3]
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