Predicting Early Childhood Caries Risk from Oral Microbiota Composition

As the most common chronic disease in children in the United States, Early Childhood Caries has a profound impact on a child's quality of life and represents a tremendous human and economic burden to society and disproportionately affects those living in poverty. Caries risk assessment is a critical component of clinical caries management, yet the accuracy, precision, and longitudinal validation of the risk assessment techniques available today is lacking, especially for preschool age children. It is therefore desirable to explore methods of risk assessment that are more are more accurate, reliable, and robust. Molecular and microbial biomarkers represent a potential source for accurate and reliable caries risk indicators. In the present study, marker gene sequencing was applied to longitudinal saliva samples that were collected at six month intervals for two years from a cohort of children ages one to three years and caries free at enrollment in order to characterize the differences in oral microbiota composition between individuals that went on to develop caries during the study period and those that remained caries free, and to predict caries risk based on those differences.