Each bacterium has its own page. On it you’ll find what the bacterium is, what population research has associated it with, what the literature suggests about shifting it, and what’s still uncertain.
The categories below describe what the research says about each group. They are not statements about your individual results.
A bacterium being in the “disease-associated” group does not mean any amount of it is bad. Most of these organisms are part of a healthy mouth at low levels. What the research focuses on is balance, and how persistent any imbalance is over time. Your oral panel and a medical professional can help you make sense of what you see in your own results.
An early biofilm colonizer that builds the foundation for the rest of the oral community
A common oral commensal that's rarely a concern
The common oral Cardiobacterium
The structural pillar of healthy dental plaque
The biofilm scaffold bacterium
A core oral commensal found at essentially every site in the mouth
A health-associated genus and one of the bacteria that makes your mouth distinctively yours
The dominant oral Haemophilus, a major nitrate reducer
A low-abundance health-associated commensal that travels with the broader aerobic community
A nitrate-reducing health-associated genus with the strongest dietary-nitrate response
A genus that contains both gum-disease pathogens and health-associated commensals
The classic gum-disease bacterium
The healthy Porphyromonas
A nitrate-reducing health-associated genus
The dominant Rothia species, a major nitrate reducer
A diverse genus spanning protective and cavity-causing species
The classic cavity-causing bacterium
A dominant healthy oral commensal and the basis of the K12 probiotic
A health-associated early colonizer that antagonizes Streptococcus mutans
A complicated genus that does not fit cleanly into "good" or "bad"
A common Veillonella species, hydrogen sulfide producer
A lactate-using anaerobe and partial nitrate reducer
Showing 22 of 22 bacteria · More publishing weekly
Order a kit, send it in, and you’ll see where each of your bacteria sits in the CDC dataset of nearly 10,000 Americans — alongside what’s known about that range.
Order a kit →The CDC’s NHANES survey sequenced the mouth bacteria of 9,660 Americans between 2009 and 2012, using the same 16S rRNA technology your kit uses. It remains the largest nationally representative oral microbiome study in the U.S.
Oral microbiome data was linked to blood marker files for 9,848 participants, and correlations were tested between specific bacteria and markers across inflammation, lipids, blood sugar, and blood pressure.
For each bacterium with a meaningful signal in the data or a substantial body of research behind it, we synthesized the published literature into a page. Every claim is cited. The library is updated as new evidence appears.
What you’ll see in this library are associations from population research. They are not predictions about your individual future. Effect sizes in this kind of research are small (correlations in the 0.03–0.09 range are typical for population-level microbiome studies), and a high or low number for any single bacterium is one signal among many. A medical professional can help you understand what your results mean for you.
Analysis: Oravi · Dataset: NHANES 2009–2012 · Spearman rank correlations on log-transformed genus relative abundances
