Relación entre bacteriófagos presentes en la cavidad bucal y salud oral humana

Caries and periodontitis are the main oral conditions that affect over 3.5 billion people worldwide, leading to significant reductions in quality of life and productivity, as well as more than US$ 298 billion in treatment costs. It is well-established that bacterial infections are the major cause of oral diseases, the relationship between these diseases and other microbial agents, such as bacteriophages, remains largely unknown. In order to explore the potential role of bacteriophages on oral health, caries, and periodontitis conditions, reads from 30 whole genome shotgun and 30 metatranscriptomes bioprojects were analyzed, 10 samples for each patient group (healthy controls, dental caries, and chronic periodontitis). This analysis yielded an average of 3.34 million paired-end reads per sample and 2.26 million of assembled contigs. A total of 3976 unique phage sequences were found. The Siphoviridae phage family was the most prevalent in all patient groups, with the Boydwoodruffvirinae subfamily being the second most abundant in the healthy group, and the Myoviridae family predominating in the other groups. Phage sequences in each patient group were identified as potential biomarkers