Oral Microbial Determinants of Saliva and Serum Lipopolysaccharide Activity.
Level 4 - case-series / case-control
Cross-sectional association analysis nested in a multicenter case-control study
PubMed 41108124 · doi:10.1177/00220345251370995
What was done
Metagenomic sequencing was performed on saliva samples from 298 individuals enrolled in the multicenter SECRETO case-control study (NCT01934725). Investigators measured lipopolysaccharide (LPS) activity in both saliva and serum. Multiple linear regression models and MaAsLin2 were used to evaluate associations of oral microbial alpha and beta diversity, taxonomic profiles, and 1,016 functional metabolic features with salivary and serum LPS activity levels.
What was found
Salivary alpha diversity was positively associated with serum LPS activity but negatively associated with salivary LPS activity, smoking, and antibiotic use in the preceding 1 to 6 months. Beta diversity differed significantly across salivary LPS tertiles (P = 0.001) but not serum LPS tertiles. The authors identified 59 taxa associated with salivary LPS tertiles and 10 with serum LPS tertiles. Prevotella, Neisseria, Leptotrichia, and Porphyromonas were positively associated with salivary LPS, while Fusobacterium was negatively associated; species with the strongest associations included Prevotella sp. E13_17, P. gingivalis, L. wadei, and F. nucleatum. Metabolic pathways for LPS, lipid A, and O-antigen biosynthesis linked to salivary LPS activity. Specific effect sizes and confidence intervals were not reported in the abstract.
Why it matters
This study identifies specific oral taxa and functional biosynthetic pathways driving local endotoxin activity and provides observational evidence linking oral microbiome dysbiosis to systemic endotoxemia.
Limits
The study design is observational and cross-sectional, precluding causal inference between oral dysbiosis and systemic endotoxemia. Systemic contributions from gut microbiota were not evaluated, and exact effect sizes or confidence intervals were omitted from the abstract.
Cited by
- contradicts LPS in the human body originates exclusively from the gut.