ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Oral Health
Sec. Oral Infections and Microbes
Oral microbiota in an aging Swedish population with high dental disease burden, an observational, registry-based study
Provisionally accepted
- 1Umea universitet Institutionen for odontologi, Umeå, Sweden
- 2University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom
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Introduction: The global population is aging. Elderly Ageing populations experience a high burden of dental and systemic diseases, yet few studies describe the oral microbiota in aging population-based cohorts. This observational, registry-based study aimed to characterize the diversity and composition of the oral microbiota in 1,093 aging Swedes being 54 to 84 years at inclusion, and evaluate associations with host traits, and prospective measures of caries and periodontal status. Methods: Saliva microbiota was characterized by complete 16S rRNA gene sequencing, and dental data were obtained from primary care dental records. Partial least squares regression was used to identify species associated with variation in age, number of teeth, total number of sequence reads, caries, and periodontal status. Follow-up analyses were run using two-part regression models with covariate adjustments. Results: The oral microbiota remains highly diverse in the aging population without major shifts within this age frame. Carriage of hitherto unregarded and well-documented disease-associated species were found to associate with metrics of active disease but not lifelong measures, such as the common DMFS index. Conclusion: The results highlight methodological considerations, including the importance of read number adjustment beyond using relative abundances, and the need for care in selecting metrics for oral disease in aging individuals.
Keywords: ElderlyAgeing, Oral microbiota, caries, Periodontitis, SIMPLER
Received: 19 Sep 2025; Accepted: 25 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Esberg, Haworth and Johansson. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Simon Haworth
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