| Title | Alterations of oral microbiota in Chinese children with viral encephalitis and/or viral meningitis |
|---|---|
| Author | Yijie Li1,2, Jing Liu3, Yimin Zhu1,2, Chunying Peng3, Yao Dong1,2, Lili Liu1,2, Yining He1,2, Guoping Lu3*, and Yingjie Zheng1,2,4* |
| Address | 1Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, P. R. China, 2Key Laboratory for Health Technology Assessment, National Commission of Health and Family Planning, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, P. R. China, 3Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, Children’s Hospital of Fudan University, National Center for Children’s Health, Shanghai 201102, P. R. China, 4Laboratory of Public Health Safety, Ministry of Education, School of Public Health, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, P. R. China |
| Bibliography | Journal of Microbiology, 60(4),429-437, 2022, |
| DOI | 10.1007/s12275-022-1560-y |
| Key Words | oral microbiota, viral encephalitis, viral meningitis, 16S rRNA, random forest, diagnostic performance |
| Abstract | The role of oral microbiota in viral encephalitis and/or viral meningitis (VEVM) remains unclear. In this hospital-based, frequency-matched study, children with clinically diagnosed VEVM (n = 68) and those with other diseases (controls, n = 68) were recruited. Their oral swab samples were collected and the oral microbiota was profiled using 16S rRNA gene sequencing. The oral microbiota of children with VEVM exhibited different beta diversity metrics (unweighted UniFrac distance: P < 0.001, R2 = 0.025, Bray-curtis dissimilarity: P = 0.045, R2 = 0.011, and Jaccard dissimilarity: P < 0.001, R2 = 0.017) and higher relative abundances of taxa identified by Linear discriminant analysis (LDA) with effect size (Enterococcus, Pedobacter, Massilia, Prevotella_9, Psychrobacter, Butyricimonas, Bradyrhizobium, etc., LDA scores > 2.0) when compared with the control group. The higher pathway abundance of steroid hormone biosynthesis predicted by oral microbiota was suggested to be linked to VEVM (q = 0.020). Further, a model based on oral microbial traits showed good predictive performance for VEVM with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.920 (95% confidence interval: 0.834–1.000). Similar results were also obtained between children with etiologically diagnosed VEVM (n = 43) and controls (n = 68). Our preliminary study identified VEVM-specific oral microbial traits among children, which can be effective in the diagnosis of VEVM. |