Oral mucositis is probably the?most debilitating?complication of head and neck cancer treatment. Little is known about the impacts of oral microbiota on the initiation and progression of mucositis. ?A total of 42?patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma undergoing (NPC) radiotherapy were enrolled in this study and their medically healthy relatives matched by sex and age were served as controls. Oral and oropharyngeal mucositis were scored clinically once every 3 days in all patients, according to the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG) criteria. A series of microbial samples were regularly taken from 19 patients of them prior to irradiation, after their 5th, 10th, 15th, 20th, 25th, 30th and 35th irradiation (corresponding to 10Gy, 20 Gy, 30 Gy, 40Gy, 50Gy, 60Gy and 70Gy), respectively. Samples were collected in patients presenting with oral mucositis by swabbing over mucosal lesions in the retropharyngeal wall with disposable medical sterile swabs, whereas in patients without clinical signs of mucositis, or in the control group, retropharyngeal mucosa was sampled. Based on 16S rRNA gene sequencing, dynamic changes in oral bacterial profile as well as correlations between the severity of mucositis and bacterial shifts during radiotherapy were investigated.
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