Fig. 3

Community state typing clusters samples into 6 community state types (colors) corresponding to age (x-axis) and early childhood caries case status (facets) when performed on 855 longitudinal, 16S rRNA gene sequenced pre-incident and incident saliva samples from 189 children from Appalachia (191 records) in an incidence-sampled case-control study (Center for Oral Health Research in Appalachia 2 study). Alluvial plot showing the proportion of the sample in each community state type at each visit and the transitions between visits, faceted by early childhood caries case status. Bars are annotated at the top with the sample size N of cases and controls (excluding children who missed visit or did not have cleaned 16S rRNA gene amplicon saliva data for that visit). Only samples from the visit at which a case was diagnosed and preceding samples were sequenced, thus fewer samples were available at later ages