Oral pathogens meet the gut microbiome: new mechanistic insights on systemic disease

TL;DR

This paper explores how harmful oral bacteria can affect gut health and contribute to various systemic diseases, offering new insights into diagnosis and treatment.

Contribution

The paper provides new mechanistic insights into how oral pathogens influence systemic diseases through the oral-gut axis.

Findings

Oral pathogens like Porphyromonas gingivalis disrupt gut ecology through translocation and immune crosstalk.

Emerging tools use oral pathogens as biomarkers for non-invasive disease detection.

Therapies targeting the oral-gut axis can restore microbial balance and reduce systemic inflammation.

Abstract

The oral-gut axis represents a critical bidirectional pathway linking oral microbiota to systemic health. Dysbiosis of the oral microbiome, driven by pathogens like Porphyromonas gingivalis, Fusobacterium nucleatum, Streptococcus species, and Helicobacter pylori, disrupts gut ecology via direct translocation, metabolite signaling (e.g., TMAO, SCFAs), and immune crosstalk (e.g., Th17). This leads to gut barrier dysfunction, systemic inflammation, and metabolic disturbances, contributing to diverse diseases beyond the oral cavity. Evidence supports causal links with conditions including rheumatoid arthritis, cardiovascular diseases, neurodegenerative disorders, metabolic syndrome, and gastrointestinal cancers. Emerging diagnostic tools exploit these oral pathogens as biomarkers for non-invasive disease detection. Therapeutic strategies, such as probiotics, dietary interventions, and periodontal therapy, target this axis to restore microbial homeostasis and ameliorate systemic inflammation. Future research must focus on longitudinal human studies and multi-omics approaches to elucidate mechanistic details and develop effective clinical interventions for preventing and managing systemic diseases linked to oral-gut microbial dysbiosis.

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