Summary
This 2021 study by Davis and colleagues at the University of Michigan published in Scientific Reports measured 21 metals in saliva from 61 children and adults and assessed their associations with oral microbiome composition (16S rRNA sequencing) and dental decay. The study detected 16 metals in 54 percent of participants and 8 metals in all participants. Marked differences in salivary bacterial taxa were associated with levels of antimony, arsenic, and mercury after multiple-testing adjustment. Antimony levels were also associated with the presence of decayed teeth. The conclusion is that salivary metal levels, even at low concentrations, may impact oral microbiome composition and oral health. This is one of the operational primary references for metal-microbiome interactions in human populations and informs the wikibiome-crosswalk content for arsenic, mercury, and cadmium.
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Update history
The five most recent substantive edits to this page, classified major (evidence or structure moved), correction (a published value or statement was wrong and has been fixed), or minor (narrative rewritten without changing the underlying evidence). Each description is derived from what the edit did to this page; the linked commit is the authoritative record, routine regeneration passes are excluded, and the full version history lives in git. When DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.
| Commit | Date | Change | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| a8052bb | 2026-08-09 | major | 3 sections added; narrative text revised |