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. 2021 Nov 27;8(12):291.
doi: 10.3390/vetsci8120291.

Assessment of Changes in the Oral Microbiome That Occur in Dogs with Periodontal Disease

Rodrigo Santibáñez  1 , Camila Rodríguez-Salas  2 , Carla Flores-Yáñez  3 , Daniel Garrido  1 , Pamela Thomson  2
Affiliations

Assessment of Changes in the Oral Microbiome That Occur in Dogs with Periodontal Disease

Rodrigo Santibáñez et al. Vet Sci. .

Abstract

The oral microbiome in dogs is a complex community. Under some circumstances, it contributes to periodontal disease, a prevalent inflammatory disease characterized by a complex interaction between oral microbes and the immune system. Porphyromonas and Tannerella spp. are usually dominant in this disease. How the oral microbiome community is altered in periodontal disease, especially sub-dominant microbial populations is unclear. Moreover, how microbiome functions are altered in this disease has not been studied. In this study, we compared the composition and the predicted functions of the microbiome of the cavity of healthy dogs to those with from periodontal disease. The microbiome of both groups clustered separately, indicating important differences. Periodontal disease resulted in a significant increase in Bacteroidetes and reductions in Actinobacteria and Proteobacteria. Porphyromonas abundance increased 2.7 times in periodontal disease, accompanied by increases in Bacteroides and Fusobacterium. It was predicted that aerobic respiratory processes are decreased in periodontal disease. Enrichment in fermentative processes and anaerobic glycolysis were suggestive of an anaerobic environment, also characterized by higher lipopolysaccharide biosynthesis. This study contributes to a better understanding of how periodontal disease modifies the oral microbiome and makes a prediction of the metabolic pathways that contribute to the inflammatory process observed in periodontal disease.

Keywords: 16S rRNA; Porphyromonas; oral microbiome; periodontal disease.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
(a) Rarefaction curves for each sample show saturation of the identified Amplicon sequence variant (ASVs) (“Species” axis). Figure was made with the vegan R package, version 2.5-7; (b) Principal Coordinate Analysis of the Weighted Unifrac diversity metric. Colors represent animals in the Healthy periodontium group (S, Blue) and animals diagnosed with Periodontitis (P, orange).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Relative abundance of the identified phyla for samples derived from all animals in the Healthy periodontium group (S, n = 12) and in the Periodontitis group (P, n = 12). Phyla that were present less than 5% in any sample were aggregated and contributed up to approximately 15% of the relative abundance.
Figure 3
Figure 3
(a) Relative mean abundance per group. Bars represent the arithmetic mean for the most abundant phyla (over 5% of the relative abundance). p-values of the non-parametric Mann-Whitney U-test are shown between parentheses; (b) Violin plots of the Shannon diversity index. Each dot represents the determined index per sample, and the shape represents an estimated probability density function of the data.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Relative mean abundance of each identified genus per treatment. Genus that was present less than 1% in any sample were aggregated, contributing 31.35% in the healthy periodontium individuals and 19.30% in the group of animals with periodontitis.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Correlation and clustering analyses for the relative abundance of phyla in each group. (a) Heatmap shows the Pearson Correlation Coefficient determined for the relative abundance of phyla only in animals with periodontal disease; (b) Pearson correlation coefficients of the relative abundance within animals in the Healthy periodontium group.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Bar plot showing the PICRUSt2 inferred pathways which relative abundance is higher in the respective group compared to the other and have a Linear Discriminant Analysis score higher than 3.0. Data was analyzed in the Galaxy Server at https://huttenhower.sph.harvard.edu/galaxy/ accessed on 16 October 2021, and results were plotted with a modified script from https://github.com/SegataLab/lefse, accessed on 16 October 2021.
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