Characterization of the Oral Bacteria in Patients With Neuroendocrine Tumors of the Pancreas.

The primary objective of this study was to investigate dysbiosis in the oral microbiota of patients with pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (pNETs) and to identify potential biomarkers for clinical diagnosis and prognostic evaluation of pNETs. Healthy controls and pNETs patients were recruited from our hospital. Salivary flora were profiled in healthy subjects (HS group) and pNETs patients (PS group) using 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Microbial diversity was assessed by α-diversity (Tukey test) and β-diversity (Partial Least Squares Discriminant Analysis, PLS-DA). Taxonomic differences between groups were evaluated using linear discriminant analysis effect size (LEfSe). The salivary microbiota of pNETs patients showed higher abundance and diversity compared to healthy controls. Dominant bacterial phyla in both groups include Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Bacteroidota, Actinobacteriota, Fusobacteriota, Cyanobacteria, and Campilobacterota. At the genus level, Leptotrichia, Actinobacillus, and Granulicatella were more abundant in the PS group. LEfSe analysis further indicated a greater abundance of Rothia, Chloroplast, Leptotrichia, Actinomyces, and Granulicatella in the PS group. Our findings offer initial evidence suggesting a potential link between oral microbiome dysbiosis and pNETs, and identify microbial features that could be evaluated in future studies as potential biomarkers for clinical diagnosis and prognosis.