Population-scale dietary signatures of the oral microbiome

Abstract

Diet is an environmental factor that influences oral microbial communities. How specific foods, nutrients and dietary patterns relate to microbial diversity, species composition and functional potential remains incompletely characterised. Here, we combined detailed dietary records with buccal metagenomic profiles from 5,824 Human Phenotype Project participants. Using these data, we examined diet-oral microbiome associations with prediction models and covariate-adjusted analyses. Plant-based and guideline-based dietary patterns showed similar associations across oral microbial species. However, species within the same genus could show opposite associations with a dietary pattern. For example, a whole-food plant-based diet score was positively associated with Streptococcus sanguinis but negatively with S. gordonii and S. oralis. Some diet-oral microbiome associations were replicated at the genus level in an independent US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey cohort of 4,667 participants. We map dietary associations with oral microbial diversity, species composition and functional potential, revealing shared microbial signatures across dietary patterns.