In a new study, researchers found microorganisms on the tongue could help diagnose heart failure.
They found the tongues of patients with chronic heart failure look totally different from those of healthy people.
Normal tongues are pale red with a pale white coating. Heart failure patients have a redder tongue with a yellow coating and the appearance changes as the disease become more advanced.
The research was conducted by a team at No.1 Hospital of Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine.
Previous research has shown that microorganisms in the tongue coating could distinguish patients with pancreatic cancer from healthy people.
And, since certain bacteria are linked with immunity, the team suggested that the microbial imbalance could stimulate inflammation and disease. Inflammation and the immune response also play a role in heart failure.
This study tested the composition of the tongue microbiome in participants with and without chronic heart failure.
The team enrolled 42 patients in hospital with chronic heart failure and 28 healthy controls.
Stainless steel spoons were used to take samples of the tongue coating in the morning before participants had brushed their teeth or eaten breakfast.
A technique called 16S rRNA gene sequencing was used to identify bacteria in the samples.
The researchers found that heart failure patients shared the same types of microorganisms in their tongue coating.
Healthy people also shared the same microbes. There was no overlap in bacterial content between the two groups.
At the genus level, five categories of bacteria distinguished heart failure patients from healthy people. In addition, there was a downward trend in levels of Eubacterium and Solobacterium with increasingly advanced heart failure.
The findings suggest that tongue microbes, which are easy to obtain, could assist with wide-scale screening, diagnosis, and long-term monitoring of heart failure.
The underlying mechanisms connecting microorganisms in the tongue coating with heart function deserve further study.
One author of the study is Dr. Tianhui Yuan, No.1 Hospital of Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine.
The study was presented on HFA Discoveries, a scientific platform of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).
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