Abstract
While the underlying determinants are unclear, hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) presents a wide spectrum of clinical manifestations with varying severity in different individuals. Recently, many studies identified the human microbiome as a critical factor in the pathogenesis of various diseases. Therefore, we here investigated the ecological dynamics of the oral microbiome changes during the HFMD infection. After targeted enrichment of all known vertebrate viruses, the virome profiles of symptomatic and asymptomatic HFMD patients were examined and revealed to be significantly altered from those of healthy individuals, with nine discriminative viruses detected. Further characterization of the prokaryotic microbiome revealed an elevated level of Streptococcus sp. as the most important signature of the symptomatic HFMD cohort, positively correlating to the level of enterovirus A RNA. In addition, we found that while coxsackievirus A5 is detected in saliva RNA of all asymptomatic cases, coxsackievirus A6 dominates the majority of the symptomatic cohort.