94% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or good
Learn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish.
Find out more
ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Microorganisms in Vertebrate Digestive Systems
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1508089
The tongue coating microbiome is perturbed in atrial fibrillation and partly normalized after catheter ablation
Provisionally accepted
Ling Wang1
Na Li2Qiong Huang1
Guangying Cui2Xiaoshuai Cheng3Yu He1Yifei Niu1Yumei Sun1Xiaoming Wang1Pengfei Liu4Junjie Tan4
Bingsen Huang1Li Li1Peiyao Ma1Dandan Li1Yanyan Li1Jing Li1Hong Luo4*
Zhigang Ren2*Yiqiang Yuan1*- 1Henan Provincial Chest Hospital Affiliated of Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, Henan Province, China
- 2First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, Henan Province, China
- 3Xinxiang Medical University, Xinxiang, Henan Province, China
- 4Guangshan People's Hospital, Xinyang, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Background: There is accumulating evidence linking the microbiome and cardiovascular diseases. Nevertheless, no existing studies have been conducted on atrial fibrillation (AF) and the oral microbiome.We collected and sequenced 245 AF tongue-coating samples and 26 AF samples after catheter ablation from Zhengzhou and Guangshan, China. We characterized tongue coating microbiome, constructed microbial classifiers in the discovery cohort, and verified their diagnostic potential in a cross-regional cohort.Results: Tongue coating microbial richness and diversity were significantly increased in the AF group compared to the control group, indicating increased bacterial colonization. The classifiers based on 4 optimal tongue coating microbial markers achieved good diagnostic efficiency in AF cohorts, with area under the curve (AUC) of 99.10% and 98.62% in the discovery and validation cohorts, respectively, and 97.97% in the cross-regional cohort. Paroxysmal AF and persistent AF shared similar taxonomic features, but some specific differential bacteria acted in the AF progression.Moreover, the outcomes revealed that catheter ablation contributed to rehabilitating oral bacterial disorders.This was the first cross-sectional and longitudinal research of oral 5 microbiome in AF patients and the alternations after catheter ablation, which offers promising new perspectives for AF clinical diagnosis and management.
Keywords: Tongue coating microbiome, Atrial Fibrillation, Catheter Ablation, biomarkers, diagnosis
Received: 09 Oct 2024; Accepted: 14 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Li, Huang, Cui, Cheng, He, Niu, Sun, Wang, Liu, Tan, Huang, Li, Ma, Li, Li, Li, Luo, Ren and Yuan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Hong Luo, Guangshan People's Hospital, Xinyang, China
Zhigang Ren, First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, 450052, Henan Province, China
Yiqiang Yuan, Henan Provincial Chest Hospital Affiliated of Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, Henan Province, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.