Preliminary analysis of mucosal and salivary bacterial communities in oral lichen planus

Objective: To characterize the bacterial community from different oral niches (buccal mucosa and saliva) in oral lichen planus (OLP) patients. Subjects and Methods: This preliminary study analyzed site-specific (mucosa and saliva) microbial landscape of 20 OLP patients and 10 healthy controls.Results: The microbial diversity was similar between OLP patients and healthy controls in both salivary and mucosal communities. However, the topological properties of co-occurrence networks of salivary and mucosal microbiome were different between healthy controls and OLP patients. SparCC analysis inferred three and five keystone taxa in the salivary and mucosal microbial networks of healthy controls, respectively. However, in the salivary and mucosal bacterial networks of OLP patients, only one hub OTU and three OTUs were identified as keystone taxa, respectively. In addition, analysis of community cohesion revealed that mucosal microbial community in OLP patients had lower stability than that in healthy controls. In final, correlation assay showed that the clinical severity of OLP was positively associated with the relative abundance of Rothia in saliva but negatively associated with that of Porphyromonas on mucosa.Conclusions: The salivary and mucosal bacterial communities of OLP patients differ in terms of composition, the genera associated with OLP severity, and co-occurrence patterns.