Bacterial Community Modifies Host Genetics Effect on Early Childhood Caries

By age 5, approximately one-fifth of children have early childhood caries (ECC). Both the oral microbiome and host genetics are thought to influence susceptibility. Whether the oral microbiome modifies genetic susceptibility to ECC has not been tested. We test whether the salivary bacteriome modifies the association of a polygenic score (PGS, a score derived from genomic data that summarizes genetic susceptibility to disease) for primary tooth decay on ECC in the Center for Oral Health Research in Appalachia 2 longitudinal birth cohort. Children were genotyped using the Illumina Multi-Ethnic Genotyping Array and underwent annual dental examinations. We constructed a PGS for primary tooth decay using weights from an independent, genome-wide association meta-analysis. Using Poisson regression, we tested for associations between the PGS (high versus low) and ECC incidence, adjusting for demographic characteristics ( n = 783). An incidence-density sampled subset of the cohort ( n = 138) had salivary bacteriome data at 24 mo of age. We tested for effect modification of the PGS on ECC case status by salivary bacterial community state type (CST). By 60 mo, 20.69% of children had ECC. High PGS was not associated with an increased rate of ECC (incidence rate ratio, 1.09; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.83–1.42). However, having a cariogenic salivary bacterial CST at 24 mo was associated with ECC (odds ratio [OR], 7.48; 95% CI, 3.06–18.26), which was robust to PGS adjustment. An interaction existed between the salivary bacterial CST and the PGS on the multiplicative scale ( P = 0.04). The PGS was associated with ECC (OR, 4.83; 95% CI, 1.29–18.17) only among individuals with a noncariogenic salivary bacterial CST ( n = 70). Genetic causes of caries may be harder to detect when not accounting for cariogenic oral microbiomes. As certain salivary bacterial CSTs increased ECC risk across genetic risk strata, preventing colonization of cariogenic microbiomes would be universally beneficial.