The oral microbiome and all-cause mortality in aUS population representative prospective cohort

Emily Vogtmann; Yukiko Yano; Jianxin Shi; Yunhu Wan; Vaishnavi Purandare; Jody McLean; Shilan Li; Rob Knight; Lisa Kahle; Autumn G Hullings; Xing Hua; Barry I Graubard; Maura L Gillison; J Gregory Caporaso; Nicholas A Bokulich; Martin J Blaser; Neal D Freedman; Anil K Chaturvedi; Christian C Abnet

doi:10.1093/infdis/jiaf321

The oral microbiome and all-cause mortality in aUS population representative prospective cohort

J Infect Dis. 2025 Jun 13:jiaf321. doi: 10.1093/infdis/jiaf321. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Emily Vogtmann¹, Yukiko Yano¹, Jianxin Shi¹, Yunhu Wan^{1

2}, Vaishnavi Purandare¹, Jody McLean³, Shilan Li⁴, Rob Knight⁵, Lisa Kahle⁶, Autumn G Hullings⁷, Xing Hua^{1

2}, Barry I Graubard¹, Maura L Gillison⁸, J Gregory Caporaso⁹, Nicholas A Bokulich¹⁰, Martin J Blaser¹¹, Neal D Freedman¹², Anil K Chaturvedi¹, Christian C Abnet¹

Affiliations

¹ Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD, USA.
² Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research/Leidos Biomedical Research Laboratory, Inc, Frederick, MD, USA.
³ National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Hyattsville, MD, USA.
⁴ Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
⁵ Center for Microbiome Innovation, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA.
⁶ Information Management Services, Inc, Calverton, MD, USA.
⁷ Department of Nutrition, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.
⁸ Department of Thoracic and Head and Neck Medical Oncology, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA.
⁹ Center for Applied Microbiome Science, Pathogen and Microbiome Institute, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, USA.
¹⁰ Laboratory of Food Systems Biotechnology, Department of Health Sciences and Technology, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
¹¹ Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine, Rutgers, Piscataway, NJ, USA.
¹² Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD, USA.

PMID: 40513117
DOI: 10.1093/infdis/jiaf321

Abstract

No large studies have evaluated whether the human oral microbiome is directly associated with mortality. We evaluated prospective associations between the oral microbiome, measured using 16S rRNA gene sequencing, from participants aged 20-69 years in the 2009-2012 cycles of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) and all-cause mortality (N=7,721, representing ∼194 million individuals). Alpha diversity was inversely associated with mortality, and some significant associations were observed with the beta diversity matrices. Higher relative abundances of Granulicatella and Lactobacillus were associated with increased risk, while Bacteroides was associated with decreased all-cause mortality at the genus level. Results suggest oral bacterial communities may be important contributors to health and disease.

Keywords: Human oral microbiome; NHANES; mortality; population-representative sample.

Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Infectious Diseases Society of America 2025.