Oral diseases are extremely common and widely spread in the world. Periodontitis - an increasingly present pathology during the last 20 years - leads to tooth loss. Lost teeth can be replaced by dental implants and it is estimated that 20 million new dental implants are inserted every year worldwide. However, also these devices can suffer from mucositis - an inflammation of the tissues around implants - or peri-implantitis, a more severe disease eventually leading to dental implant removal, when the disease is not diagnosed and early treated. These peri-implant diseases affect almost 20% of patients, hence are becoming a significant problem both from economic and health point of views.
In recent years, scientific research has linked peri-implant diseases with microbial dysbiosis causing pathogenic plaque, which is still not well known and could be extremely relevant for early diagnosing and personalized treatment. For this reason, we investigated on the oral microbiome and identified a “specific signature” for peri-implant diseases
Through our research program named PreBiomics Beta Program and the ERC Proof of Concept funding we collected more than 1000 oral samples from patients with healthy, peri-implant mucositis and peri-implantitis implants recruited among 50 Italian dental clinics. We leverage high-throughput metagenomics to explore the microbial diversity within the samples, and we isolated 100 bacterial colonies associated with Fusobacterium nucleatum, a key player in the development of peri-implant diseases. We managed to identify clear microbial signatures of healthy, mucositis and peri-implantitis implants, with the latest mainly composed of PiRCTM species and new uncharacterized ones. Using the reconstructed and isolated genomes, we further expanded the F. nucleatum phylogenetic tree composed of 5 different subspecies of which we characterized the antibiotic profiles and the presence of virulence factors.
The results coming from this project allowed us to further develop the first version of our PreBiomics Test, a quick and easy-to-use tool for the prevention, diagnosis and personalized treatment of the peri-implant diseases that can be commercialized. Our test offers a concrete solution for preventing, diagnosing, and treating mucositis and peri-implantitis and will alleviate the social burden of implant failure and the excessive use of antibiotics.
