Table 1.

Gut microbiota biomarkers for EC screening and prognostication.

Study	Population(s)	Study sample size	Study period	Study platform	Main findings	Marker type
Blackett et al. (82)	British	37 GERD, 45 BE, 30 EAC, and 39 healthy controls	2013	qPCR	The abundance of Campylobacter in esophageal adenocarcinoma was significantly lower than that in GERD and Barrett’s esophagus.	Diagnosis
Chen et al. (30)	Chinese	87 ESCC and 85 healthy controls	2015	16S rRNA	Prevos, Pseudomonas, and Streptococcus had a higher abundance in saliva than the control group in ESCC.	Diagnosis
Elliott et al. (36)	British	19 EAC and 20 healthy controls	2017	16S rRNA	Lactobacillus fermentum was enriched in esophageal adenocarcinoma.	Diagnosis
Peter et al. (48)	American	81 EAC and 160 healthy controls 25 ESCC and 50 healthy controls	2017	16S rRNA	Neisseria and Streptococcus pneumoniae/Porphyromonas gingivalis were positively related to the presence of EAC/ESCC, respectively	Diagnosis
Snider et al. (29)	American	32 BE and 17 healthy controls	2018	16S rRNA	A model including relative abundance of Lautropia, Streptococcus, and Bacteroidales in order to distinguish BE from controls with an area under the ROC curve of 0.94	Diagnosis
Zhou et al.	Australian	6 EAC and 16 healthy controls	2020	16S rRNA	A high abundance of Staphylococcus, Lactobacillus, Bifidobacterium, and Streptococcus, which contribute towards dysregulated lactic acid-producing, consist of a distinct EAC microbiota.	Diagnosis
Yang et al. (46)	Chinese	18 ESCC and 11 healthy controls	2021	16S rRNA	Employing decreased abundance of Bacteroidetes, Fusobacteria, and Spirochaetes into a microbial dysbiosis index showed that dysbiosis microbiota had an excellent capacity to discriminate between ESCC and normal subjects.	Diagnosis
Deng et al. (83)	Chinese	23 EC and 23 healthy controls	2021	16S rRNA	ROC analysis revealed that Lachnospira, Bacteroides, Streptococcus, and Bifidobacterium achieved an area under the curve that was more than 0.85, showing high accuracy in EC diagnosis	Diagnosis
Gao et al. (28)	Chinses	100 ESCC	2016	qPCR	Porphyromonas gingivalis was also positively correlated with the severity and poor clinical prognosis of ESCC.	Prognosis
Liu et al. (84)	Chinses	45 ESCC	2018	16S rRNA	The abundances of genera Prevotella and Streptococcus were inversely correlated with survival rates in ESCC patients	Prognosis
Yamamura et al. (85)	Japanese	551 ESCC	2019	qPCR	High level of Fusobacterium nucleatum in the tumor was associated with larger tumor size, higher T stage, higher TNM stage, and worse prognoses.	Prognosis
Li et al. (45)	Chinese	17 ESCC, 15 patients at 9–12 months after ESCC radical esophagectomy and 16 healthy controls	2020	16S rRNA	Bacteroidetes and Pseudomonas were the key taxa contributing to the changes in the microbiome of the ESCC and post-ESCC groups which were similar to the healthy control group. The monitoring of the Bacteroidetes and Pseudomonas may be an essential method to predict the recurrence of the tumor.	Prognosis