Ancient dental calculus reveals oral microbiome shifts associated with lifestyle and disease in Great Britain
Date
2023
Authors
Gancz, A.S.
Farrer, A.G.
Nixon, M.P.
Wright, S.
Arriola, L.
Adler, C.
Davenport, E.R.
Gully, N.
Cooper, A.
Britton, K.
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Journal article
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Nature Microbiology, 2023; 8(12):2315-2325
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Abigail S. Gancz, Andrew G. Farrer, Michelle P. Nixon, Sterling Wright, Luis Arriola, Christina Adler, Emily R. Davenport, Neville Gully, Alan Cooper, Kate Britton, Keith Dobney, Justin D. Silverman, Laura S. Weyrich
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Abstract
The prevalence of chronic, non-communicable diseases has risen sharply in recent decades, especially in industrialized countries. While several studies implicate the microbiome in this trend, few have examined the evolutionary history of industrialized microbiomes. Here we sampled 235 ancient dental calculus samples from individuals living in Great Britain (∼2200 BCE to 1853 CE), including 127 well-contextualized London adults. We reconstructed their microbial history spanning the transition to industrialization. After controlling for oral geography and technical biases, we identified multiple oral microbial communities that coexisted in Britain for millennia, including a community associated with Methanobrevibacter, an anaerobic Archaea not commonly prevalent in the oral microbiome of modern industrialized societies. Calculus analysis suggests that oral hygiene contributed to oral microbiome composition, while microbial functions reflected past differences in diet, specifically in dairy and carbohydrate consumption. In London samples, Methanobrevibacter-associated microbial communities are linked with skeletal markers of systemic diseases (for example, periostitis and joint pathologies), and their disappearance is consistent with temporal shifts, including the arrival of the Second Plague Pandemic. This suggests pre-industrialized microbiomes were more diverse than previously recognized, enhancing our understanding of chronic, non-communicable disease origins in industrialized populations.
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© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited 2023. Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.