Scoping review reveals highly variable oral microbiome shifts across head and neck cancer stages, highlighting inconsistent reporting and the need for standardized prognostic research.
Key Points
To comprehensively assess the role, composition, and clinical associations of the oral microbiome across the continuum of head and neck cancer risk, staging, and survival.
Conducted a scoping review searching Ovid MEDLINE, Embase, Web of Science, and Open Grey for studies published between 2011 and 2024, with duplicate title and abstract screening.
Extracted and descriptively analyzed study characteristics, sample sizes, tumor sites, clinical stages, survival data, and microbiome sequencing methodologies across 105 included studies.
Studies were predominantly from Asia (61%, n=64) and focused on oral cavity cancer (55%, n=58), with study sample sizes ranging from 5 to 499 patients who were mostly male (75%, n=4,044) and over 50 years old.
Tumor stage was detailed in 60% of studies (n=63) and survival in only 17% (n=18), while single-time-point clinical sampling was used in 90% (n=94) and Illumina platforms in 70% (n=73).
Fusobacterium nucleatum was the most frequent species to increase in abundance (7%, n=7), whereas Haemophilus parainfluenzae most commonly decreased in abundance (9%, n=9).