Results from a pilot study on the oral microbiome in children and adolescents with chronic nonbacterial osteomyelitis

Objective To analyze the composition of the oral microbiome in children and adolescents with chronic nonbacterial osteomyelitis (CNO) with respect to age distribution, gender differences, effects of medication, disease activity and the influence of body site. Methods The oral microbiome of 20 patients (12 male and 8 female; median age 10.3 years) and 36 controls were examined. Two different sites of the oral cavity were swabbed at two time points. Current medication and disease activity were evaluated and registered at these time points. Samples were subjected to amplicon sequencing of the V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene and Qiime2 was used to calculate alpha and beta diversity for multiple alternative metrics. Results On the basis of relative abundances of 975 different suboperational taxonomic units in high throughput next generation sequencing, a significant shift in the composition of the oral microbiome (p < 0.02) was observed among patients being treated with different medications. There was a significant difference in bacterial communities between the group aged 3-8 years old and the group aged 9-14 years old. Significant differences were also seen in bacterial colonization on different sites in the oral cavity, but not with respect to gender or disease activity. Conclusion We present first data of a pilot study of the oral microbiome in children and adolescents with CNO, a rare autoinflammatory bone disease. Differences of the oral microbiome of diseased children to normal adult controls revealed a possible role of the oral microbiome as modulatory target or biomarker in CNO.