Dental News - New study may help in better prevention of early childhood caries

Dental Tribune International

Mon. 16. April 2018

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ALEXANDRIA, Va., U.S.: Protecting children against the early onset of dental caries is something all dentists should consider a priority. According to the results of a recent U.S. study, supragingival biofilm potentially harbors taxonomic and functional information that could be used to inform precision dentistry in early childhood caries (ECC) prevention, something the researchers believe will provide novel insights into the metagenomics of the infection.

“With this study, we sought to characterize preschool-age children’s supragingival microbiome composition according to clinical statuses of health (‘caries-free’), ‘restored disease’ and ‘non-restored’ or ‘untreated’ disease,” said lead researcher Dr. Kimon Divaris, associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Dentistry, U.S.

The study group consisted of 118 children aged 3–5 who were enrolled in ZOE 2.0, a community-based genetic epidemiological study in North Carolina. Examiners recorded caries experience at the surface level using modified International Caries Detection and Assessment System criteria and classified children as being caries-free or having restored or untreated disease. The researchers then collected supragingival biofilm samples from the study group, and these were frozen on-site and processed and underwent whole genome sequencing, the process of determining the complete DNA sequence of an organism’s genetic material at a single time.

From this, the researchers identified 85 bacterial genera and 201 bacterial species—185 of which were identified down to the strain level. According to the results, notable differences in species abundance were found between the three groups, including the following: caries-free: Streptococcus intermediusand Capnocytophaga; restored disease: Actinomyces odontolyticusand Streptococcus australis; and untreated disease: Streptococcus mutans.

“This knowledge is foundational for the development of precision medicine/precision dentistry approaches for diagnosis, prevention and treatment in the oral health domain. Our long-term goal is to characterize oral health and disease at the molecular level; in other words, define taxonomic or functional signatures in the supragingival biofilm that represent the ECC-associated oral dysbiosis prior to clinical disease development,” said Divaris.

The study, titled “Metagenomics of early childhood oral health and early childhood caries,” was presented at the 47^thannual meeting of the American Association for Dental Research by Divaris and ZOE 2.0 co-investigators Drs. Andrea Ferreira-Zandona and Jeannie Ginnis, also from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Dentistry, on March 22 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, U.S.

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