Yanwei Chen,1,* Xuechen Chen,2,* Haixin Yu,2 Haibo Zhou,3 Shu Xu4



1Infection Control Department of Shenzhen Hospital of University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, People’s Republic of China; 2Medical Faculty Heidelberg, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany; 3Institute of Pharmaceutical Analysis, College of Pharmacy, Jinan University, Guangzhou, People’s Republic of China; 4Oncology Department of Shenzhen Hospital of University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, People’s Republic of China



*These authors contributed equally to this work



Correspondence: Shu Xu

Oncology Department of Shenzhen Hospital of University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 4253 Songbai Road, Guangming District, Shenzhen 518106, People’s Republic of China

Tel +86 18126081801

Email selflearner@126.com



Abstract: Emerging evidence has shown the potential of oral microbiota as a noninvasive diagnostic tool in gastrointestinal (GI) cancer. PubMed, Web of Science, and Embase were systematically searched for eligible studies published until May 31, 2019. Of the 17 included studies published between 2011 and 2019, five kinds of GI cancer, including colorectal cancer (n=6), pancreatic cancer (n=5), gastric cancer (n=4), esophageal cancer (n=2) and liver cancer (n=1), were reported. Generally, the diagnostic performance of the multi-bacteria model for GI cancer was strong with the best area under the receiver operator characteristic curve (AUC) exceeding 0.90, but only one study had a validation phase. Pathogens involved in periodontal disease, such as Porphyromonas gingivalis and Tannerella forsythia, were linked to various kinds of GI cancer. Besides, more oral bacteria significantly differed between cases with upper digestive cancer and healthy controls when compared to colorectal cancer (the most common form of lower digestive cancer), probably indicating a different mechanism due to anatomical and physiological differences in the digestive tract. Oral microbiota changes were associated with risk of various kinds of GI cancer, which could be considered as a potential tool for early prediction and prevention of GI cancer, but validation based on a large population, reproducible protocols for oral microbiota research and oral-gut microbiota transmission patterns are required to be resolved in further studies.



Keywords: gastrointestinal cancer, oral microbiota, detection

