Assessing the Relationship Between Nitrate-Reducing Capacity of the Oral Microbiome and Systemic Outcomes

Abstract

The significance of the oral microbiome in the generation of the nitric oxide (NO) via the enterosalivary nitrate-nitrite-nitric oxide pathway is increasingly recognized, directly linking the oral microbiome to cardiometabolic outcomes influenced by NO. The objective of this chapter is to outline a strategy of identifying pathway-specific bacterial taxa or predicted genes of interest from 16S rRNA data, specifically in the enterosalivary pathway of nitrate reduction, and analyzing their relationship with cardiometabolic outcomes using multivariable regression models.

Keywords: Nitrate, Nitrite, Nitric oxide pathway; Oral microbiome; Pathway activity prediction.