Periodontal disease is a microbially-mediated inflammatory disease of tooth-supporting tissues that leads to bone and tissue loss around teeth. Although bacterially-mediated mechanisms of alveolar bone destruction have been widely studied, the effects of a polymicrobial infection on the periodontal ligament and microbiome/virome have not been well explored. Therefore, the current investigation introduced a new mouse model of periodontal disease to examine the effects of a polymicrobial infection on periodontal ligament (PDL) properties, changes in bone loss, the host immune response, and the microbiome/virome using shotgun sequencing. Periodontal pathogens, namely Porphyromonas gingivalis, Treponema denticola, Tannerella forsythia, and Fusobacterium nucleatum were used as the polymicrobial oral inoculum in BALB/cByJ mice. The polymicrobial infection triggered significant alveolar bone loss, a heightened antibody response, an elevated cytokine immune response, a significant shift in viral diversity and virome composition, and a widening of the PDL space; the latter two findings have not been previously reported in periodontal disease models. Changes in the PDL space were present at sites far away from the site of insult, indicating that the polymicrobial radius of effect extends beyond the bone loss areas and site of initial infection and wider than previously appreciated. Associations were found between bone loss, specific viral and bacterial species, immune genes, and PDL space changes. These findings may have significant implications for the pathogenesis of periodontal disease and biomechanical properties of the periodontium. This new polymicrobial mouse model of periodontal disease in a common mouse strain is useful for evaluating the features of periodontal disease.

中文翻译：

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微生物性牙周病会触发广泛的作用范围和独特的病毒。

牙周疾病是牙齿支撑组织的微生物介导的炎性疾病，可导致牙齿周围的骨骼和组织流失。尽管已经广泛研究了细菌介导的牙槽骨破坏的机制，但尚未很好地探索多菌感染对牙周膜和微生物组/病毒组的影响。因此，当前的研究引入了一种新的牙周病小鼠模型，以使用shot弹枪测序法检查多菌感染对牙周膜（PDL）特性，骨损失变化，宿主免疫反应以及微生物组/病毒组的影响。在BALB / cByJ小鼠中，牙周病原体，即牙龈卟啉单胞菌，树突密螺旋体，连翘坦氏菌和核纤梭菌被用作多菌种口服接种物。多微生物感染引起明显的肺泡骨丢失，抗体应答增强，细胞因子免疫应答升高，病毒多样性和病毒组成明显改变以及PDL空间的扩大。后两个发现以前尚未在牙周疾病模型中报道。PDL空间的变化存在于远离损伤部位的部位，这表明多效微生物的作用半径扩展到了骨丢失区域和初始感染部位之外，并且比以前意识到的更宽。发现骨丢失，特定病毒和细菌种类，免疫基因和PDL空间变化之间存在关联。这些发现可能对牙周疾病的发病机理和牙周生物力学特性具有重要意义。