Sex differences in the oral microbiome, host traits, and their causal relationships

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  • Xiaomin Liu
  • Xin Tong
  • Jie Zhu
  • Liu Tian
  • Qiang Sun
  • Yanmei Ju
  • Leying Zou
  • Haorong Lu
  • Xuemei Qiu
  • Qiang Li
  • Yunli Liao
  • Heng Lian
  • Yong Zuo
  • Xiaomin Chen
  • Weiqiao Rao
  • Yan Ren
  • Yuan Wang
  • Jin Zi
  • Rong Wang
  • Xun Xu
  • Huanming Yang
  • Jian Wang
  • Yang Zong
  • Weibin Liu
  • Yong Hou
  • Xin Jin
  • Liang Xiao
  • Huijue Jia
  • Tao Zhang

The oral microbiome has been implicated in a growing number of diseases; however, determinants of the oral microbiome and their roles remain elusive. Here, we investigated the oral (saliva and tongue dorsum) metagenome, the whole genome, and other omics data in a total of 4,478 individuals and demonstrated that the oral microbiome composition and its major contributing host factors significantly differed between sexes. We thus conducted a sex-stratified metagenome-genome-wide-association study (M-GWAS) and identified 11 differential genetic associations with the oral microbiome (psex-difference < 5 × 10−8). Furthermore, we performed sex-stratified Mendelian randomization (MR) analyses and identified abundant causalities between the oral microbiome and serum metabolites. Notably, sex-specific microbes-hormonal interactions explained the mostly observed sex hormones differences such as the significant causalities enrichments for aldosterone in females and androstenedione in males. These findings illustrate the necessity of sex stratification and deepen our understanding of the interplay between the oral microbiome and serum metabolites.

Original languageEnglish
Article number105839
JournaliScience
Volume26
Issue number1
Number of pages23
ISSN2589-0042
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s)

    Research areas

  • Microbial metabolism, Microbiome, Oral microbiology

ID: 334257592