Association between the oral microbiome and clinical indicators of resectable non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC)

Background: Oral microbial implications for lung cancer outcomes and association with clinical markers are largely unknown. Objective: This work aimed to characterize the oral microbiome in relation to clinical indicators and identify oral microbial biomarkers associated with lung cancer outcomes in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Design: This is an observational prospective study of saliva samples from patients undergoing curative surgery for NSCLC. Taxonomic and composition profiles were generated using full-length 16S rRNA gene sequencing (n=64). Differences in bacterial diversity and composition with cancer stage, histological subtype, overall survival (OS), and event-free survival (EFS) were examined. Results: Most alpha diversity measures were lower with stage III cancer compared to stage I. All other clinical features were not statistically associated with alpha diversity (P>0.05). The relative abundance of Haemophilus and Solobacterium was detected as significantly differentially abundant in participants with stage III NSCLC by at least 2 differentially abundant tools and an FDR-corrected p-value<0.1. Conclusion: This study shows a significant association between cancer stage with oral bacterial diversity and the relative abundance of specific genera in relation to OS in participants with resectable NSCLC. This study is limited by sample size and needs to be confirmed in larger studies.