Characterization of Dentin Carious Lesions and Supragingival Plaque from Children that Suffer from Severe Early Childhood Caries (S-ECC)

Abstract

Purpose In order to better understand disease progression of Severe-Early Childhood Caries (S-ECC), we applied cutting edge metagenomic sequencing in order to evaluate the microbial diversity and taxonomic profiles of supragingival and dentin plaque from S-ECC lesions. Methods Children diagnosed with S-ECC, treatment planned for extractions, and scheduled for dental rehabilitation under general anesthesia were recruited. Supragingival plaque samples from matching sextants of planned extraction sites and deep dentinal plaque from extracted teeth were collected using sterile technique and placed in anaerobic transfer media (ATM). The DNA of each sample was isolated and sequenced on a Illumina MiSeq using paired-end chemistry. A subset of samples were sequenced on an Illumina NovaSeq for WGS analysis using paired end chemistry. Microbiome analysis includes Alpha and Beta diversity, beta dissimilarity, and taxonomic investigation at the strain level. Results Supragingival plaque displayed more diversity than deep caries dentin (Weighted Bray Curtis Distance: PC1, P=1.9x10-5). Lactobacillus genus was significantly enriched in the deep carious dentin samples, with L. casei, L. gasseri and L. paracasei being prominent species. Streptococcus mutans was elevated in both the supragingival and deep carious dentin samples. Conclusions There is significant difference in the alpha and beta diversity between supragingival plaque and deep carious dentin in children with S-ECC. This data provides the most in depth metagenomic analysis of S-ECC samples to date.