Purpose: To explore the differences between plaque biofilms of children with different caries activities via metabolomics.
Methods: A case-control study was conducted to investigate the oral health-related behaviors of children in caries-free (CF), low level of early childhood caries(LECC) and high level of early childhood caries (HECC) groups and to collect supragingival plaque biofilms. Untargeted metabolomics was used to detect the compositions of plaque biofilm metabolites in three groups. Orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis, volcano plot and heat map were used to analyze the significant differential metabolites between groups with SPSS 26.0 software package.
Results: A total of 102 children aged 36 months were included in this study, including 34 children in each group. A total of 660 metabolites belonging to 11 categories were detected. There were statistical differences of 6 metabolites between LECC group and CF group, and 22 metabolites showed statistical differences between HECC group and CF group(P＜0.05). Cys Cys Cys Gln, Cys Gln Cys Cys and 5-O-p-coumaroylnigrumin were the common differential metabolites between children with different levels of dental caries.
Conclusions: There are differences in the compositions of plaque biofilms between children with different caries activities and healthy children. Peptides are important differential metabolites within plaque biofilms, also related to oral health.