There are so many different dog foods out there, with so many different health claims, that it can be confusing to choose the right one for your pet. Is a dry food better? Or a canned wet food? Do canned wet foods cause poor oral health? To answer these questions, Oba et al. (2022) sought to determine the impact of wet and dry dog food on the canine oral microbiome. To do so, the researchers measured breath odor and salivary pH as a measure of oral health and collected plaque samples for oral microbiome analysis. Tooth plaque was sampled from 12 healthy dogs which were fed with wet or dry food for 6 weeks. DNA was extracted, shotgun sequencing was performed, and the samples were sent to CosmosID (Germantown, MD) for analysis on the CosmosID-HUB. The key findings of the bioinformatics analysis were as follows:
- Supragingival plaque samples had greater alpha diversity than subgingival plaque samples
- Supragingival and subgingival plaques samples were significantly dissimilar in microbial community composition (beta diversity)
- Supragingival plaque samples from wet food-fed dogs had significantly greater alpha diversity than dry-fed dogs
- Beta diversity was also significantly different in the oral microbiota of wet-fed and dry-fed dogs
- Fusobacteria and >20 bacterial genera had significantly different relative abundance in supragingival plaque samples of wet or dry food-fed dog oral microbiomes
- Overall, microbes linked with poor oral health were less abundant and those linked with good health were more abundant in dry food-fed oral samples
