Alterations of oral microbiome and metabolic signatures and their interaction in oral lichen planusOriginal paper
Karen Pendergrass is a microbiome researcher specializing in microbiome-targeted interventions (MBTIs). She systematically analyzes scientific literature to identify microbial patterns, develop hypotheses, and validate interventions. As the founder of the Microbiome Signatures Database, she bridges microbiome research with clinical practice. In 2012, based on her own investigative research, she became the first documented case of FMT for Celiac Disease, four years before the first published case study.
Read MoreWhat was studied?
Researchers examined whether oral microbiome and salivary metabolome changes together explain oral lichen planus (OLP), a chronic mucosal inflammatory condition with malignant potential. They analyzed saliva from 95 OLP patients and 105 healthy controls.
How was it studied?
The team ran 16S rRNA sequencing and untargeted LC-MS metabolomics on saliva, then used differential analysis, Spearman correlation, and four machine learning algorithms (LASSO, SVM-RFE, XGBoost, random forest) to find microbe and metabolite biomarkers, adjusting for gender and age.
What did they find?
Pseudomonas, Aggregatibacter, Campylobacter and Lautropia were enriched in OLP while 18 genera decreased. A total of 153 saliva metabolites distinguished OLP, and Oribacterium correlated with specific lipid and amino acid metabolites tied to clinical severity. A panel of Pseudomonas, Rhodococcus and (±)10-HDoHE separated OLP from controls with AUC 0.904 in the training set and 0.890 in validation.
Why it matters
The findings link oral microbial dysbiosis to lipid and pyrimidine metabolism disruptions in OLP, suggesting a noninvasive saliva-based microbiome-metabolome panel could eventually aid diagnosis.