Evaluating the ecological hypothesis: early life salivary microbiome assembly predicts dental caries in a longitudinal case-control study

Table 2 Associations between future early childhood caries and salivary microbiome measures, among pre-incident children from Appalachia

Characteristic	~2-month visit^a			~12-month visit^a			~24-month visit^a
Characteristic	Case, N = 99¹	Control, N = 91¹	p value²	Case, N = 89¹	Control, N = 81¹	p value²	Case, N = 73¹	Control, N = 69¹	p value²
Shannon	2.1 (0.5)	1.9 (0.5)	0.01	2.9 (0.4)	3.0 (0.4)	0.05	3.5 (0.3)	3.5 (0.4)	0.4
Missing	7	6		5	5		4	4
Chao1	31.8 (12.3)	27.8 (10.0)	0.03	57.4 (16.8)	62.7 (14.6)	0.05	85.9 (19.3))	88.1 (19.2)	0.5
Missing	7	6		5	5		4	4
S. mutans abundance	0.0 (0.0)	0.0 (0.0)	> 0.9	0.0 (0.0)	0.0 (0.0)	0.07	0.0 (0.0)	0.0 (0.0)	< 0.001
Missing	7	6		5	5		4	4
S. mutans ASV detected			> 0.9			0.12			< 0.001
No	90 (98%)	83 (98%)		78 (93%)	75 (99%)		50 (72%)	64 (98%)
Yes	2 (2.2%)	2 (2.4%)		6 (7.1%)	1 (1.3%)		19 (28%)	1 (1.5%)
Missing	7	6		5	5		4	4
S. wiggsiae abundance	0.0 (0.0)	0.0 (0.0)	0.7	0.0 (0.0)	0.0 (0.0)		0.0 (0.0)	0.0 (0.0)	0.3
Missing	7	6		5	5		4	4
S. wiggsiae ASV detected			0.7						> 0.9
No	86 (93%)	78 (92%)		84 (100%)	76 (100%)		68 (99%)	65 (100%)
Yes	6 (6.5%)	7 (8.2%)					1 (1.4%)	0 (0%)
Missing	7	6		5	5		4	4

¹ Mean (SD); n (%)
² Wilcoxon rank sum test; Fisher’s exact test; Pearson’s chi-squared test
^a Includes duplicate records for 1 child selected as a control at 36 months and a case at 60 months, and 1 child selected as a control for both 36- and 60-month risk sets. Excludes samples from children diagnosed as a case at that visit and their corresponding risk-set controls (N = 6 at 12 months, N = 37 at 24 months)

ISSN: 2049-2618