Adjunctive postbiotics administration modulates oral microbiota associated with dental caries

Dental caries is a progressive oral disease mediated by multiple bacteria. Conventional filling therapy could not fundamentally reduce the pathogenic bacteria count in oral cavity. Therefore, this study was to explore the modulation effect of adjunctive postbiotics intervention for 14 days on oral microbiota after dental caries filling. It was found that dental caries led to oral microbiota diversity increase, and the microbiota structure was significantly different from the health people. Filling therapy could partly restore the oral microbiota disturbed by dental caries. By comparison, postbiotics intervention could more significantly lower the caries-induced high Shannon and Simpson index, and bring the microbiota structure closer to the health level. Co-occurrence network analysis also showed that the microbiota structure was more stable after postbiotics intervention. Further analysis of microbiota composition reflected that postbiotics intervention significantly increased the relative abundance of Pseudomonas and Pseudomonas reactans, decreased Prevotella shahii, and the functional metagenome consequently changed. Besides, BugBase-predicted phenotypes inferred to a decreased potential pathogenic bacteria abundance and enhanced oxidative stress tolerance ability of microbiota after postbiotics intervention. Collectively, our results suggested that adjunctive postbiotics could possessed better prognosis to dental caries patients by regulating oral microbiota.