Richard Sprague

My personal website

What’s happening to my mouth microbiome?

Richard Sprague / 2017-10-17


My regular sampling of my microbiome often yields unexpected suprises, and this one has me stumped. The species of Streptococcus detected in my mouth has changed. Suddenly, in December 2016 my mouth was colonized by a particular species that had not been there before. Why? I hadn’t done anything special; I’m not aware of any major lifestyle or other changes to cause this.

I confirmed with the lab that it’s not contamination.

What’s especially odd is that I experienced a shift like this twice now in one year. After comfortably floating along with Species Streptococcus sp. BS35a for more than six months, suddenly in August the balance shifted again, this time to Streptococcus sp. 11aTha1. Will it shift again? Who knows?