The effect of physical and psychological stress on the oral microbiome.

Background: The oral microbiome is incredibly complex, containing a diverse complement of microbiota that has previously been categorized into 6 broad phyla. While techniques such as next-generation sequencing have contributed to a better understanding of the composition of the oral microbiome, the role it plays in human health and disease is still under investigation. Previous studies have identified that a more diverse microbiome is advantageous for health. Therefore, alterations to the physical or mental health that are of interest in this study, such as stress, are the factors that decrease microbial diversity, leading to the potential for dysbiosis and disease disposition. Intensive Surgical Skills Week (ISSW) is a hyper-realistic simulation training week for military medical students that takes place at the Strategic Operations (STOPS) facility in San Diego, CA. This training week puts students through mass causality simulations and requires them to work through distinct roles within the healthcare team, providing an almost ideal environment to assess the impact of acute stress on oral microbiome diversity. Based on the literature on stress and microbiota, we hypothesized that the high stress simulation events at ISSW will impact the composition and diversity of the oral microbiome. Methods: To investigate this hypothesis, thirty-seven ( Results: We saw an overall increase in species richness at the end of ISSW when looking at all samples ( Conclusion: Our preliminary data indicates that physical and psychological stress can impact the composition of the oral microbiome. The analyses in this study show that using the oral microbiome as an indicator of stress is promising and may provide evidence to support stress management practices.