Subspecies Niche Specialization in the Oral Microbiome Is Associated with Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma Risk
Justine W. Debelius, Tingting Huang, Yonglin Cai, Alexander Ploner, Donal Barrett, Xiaoying Zhou, Xue Xiao, Yancheng Li, Jian Liao, Yuming Zheng, Guangwu Huang, Hans‐Olov Adami, Yi Zeng, Zhe Zhang, Weimin Ye
Abstract
The relationship between oral health and the risk of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) was previously established. However, the role of oral microbiome has not been evaluated in the disease in a large epidemiological study. This paper clearly establishes a difference in the oral microbiomes between NPC patients and healthy controls which cannot be explained by other confounding factors. It furthermore identifies a pair of closely related coexcluding organisms associated with the disease, highlighting the importance of modern methods for single-nucleotide resolution in 16S rRNA sequence characterization. To the best of our knowledge, this is one of the first examples of cancer-associated niche specialization of the oral microbiome.