Characterization of tongue coating microbiome from patients with colorectal cancer

ABSTRACT

Background

Tongue coating microbiota has aroused particular interest in profiling oral and digestive system cancers. However, little is known on the relationship between tongue coating microbiome and colorectal cancer (CRC).

Methods

Metagenomic shotgun sequencing was performed on tongue coating samples collected from 30 patients with CRC, 30 patients with colorectal polyps (CP), and 30 healthy controls (HC). We further validated the potential of the tongue coating microbiota to predict the CRC by a random forest model.

Results

We found a greater species diversity in CRC samples, and the nucleoside and nucleotide biosynthesis pathway was more apparent in the CRC group. Importantly, various species across participants jointly shaped three distinguishable fur types.The tongue coating microbiome profiling data gave an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.915 in discriminating CRC patients from control participants; species such as Atopobium rimae, Streptococcus sanguinis, and Prevotella oris aided differentiation of CRC patients from healthy participants.

Conclusion

These results elucidate the use of tongue coating microbiome in CRC patients firstly, and the fur-types observed contribute to a better understanding of the microbial community in human. Furthermore, the tongue coating microbiota-based biomarkers provide a valuable reference for CRC prediction and diagnosis.

KEYWORDS:

• Microbiome
• tongue coating
• metagenomic shotgun sequencing
• fur-types
• colorectal cancer

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/20002297.2024.2344278

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the State Key Laboratory of Dampness Syndrome ofChinese Medicine, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine [SZ2021ZZ27]; Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Joint Lab on Chinese Medicine and Immune Disease Research, Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine[2020B1212030006].