Patient-specific Analysis of Periodontal and Peri-implant Microbiomes

Periodontally involved teeth have been implicated as ‘microbial reservoirs’ in the etiology of peri-implant diseases. Therefore, the purpose of this investigation was to use a deep-sequencing approach to identify the degree of congruence between adjacent peri-implant and periodontal microbiomes in states of health and disease. Subgingival and peri-implant biofilm samples were collected from 81 partially edentulous individuals with periodontal and peri-implant health and disease. Bacterial DNA was isolated, and the 16S rRNA gene was amplified and sequenced by pyrotag sequencing. Chimera-depleted sequences were compared against a locally hosted curated database for bacterial identification. Statistical significance was determined by paired Student’s t tests between tooth-implant pairs. The 1.9 million sequences identified represented 523 species. Sixty percent of individuals shared less than 50% of all species between their periodontal and peri-implant biofilms, and 85% of individuals shared less than 8% of abundant species between tooth and implant. Additionally, the periodontal microbiome demonstrated significantly higher diversity than the implant, and distinct bacterial lineages were associated with health and disease in each ecosystem. Analysis of our data suggests that simple geographic proximity is not a sufficient determinant of colonization of topographically distinct niches, and that the peri-implant and periodontal microbiomes represent microbiologically distinct ecosystems.