The mouth or oral cavity area is an excellent indicator of the whole body’s health, says a University of Maryland Dental School professor.
Professor Li Mao insists surface tissues inside the cheek could be checked to detect tobacco-induced damage in the lungs.
This could prove to be an important advancement in designing future lung cancer prevention trials.
“We hypothesized that tobacco-induced molecular alterations in the oral epithelium are similar to those in the lungs,” said Mao.
The expert added: “This might have broader implications for using the mouth as a diagnostic indicator for general health.”
“I feel that dentists should play a major role in prevention of cancer and Dr Mao is the leading oral cancer researcher in the country. He crosses the bridge between medicine and dentistry,” said University of Maryland Dental School Dean Christian S Stohler, DMD, DrMedDent, a leader in the movement to retool dental education.
“Being a physician helps expand dental health care and he wants to change how patients are being treated because his background is in head and neck cancer,” Stohler added.
The study is published in the journal Cancer Prevention Research.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Mouth can indicate body’s overall health
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Clean mouth can help preserve Memory
Keeping your teeth brushed and flossed can help preserve memory, say researchers.
The study at West Virginia University has found a link between gum disease and memory loss.
“Older people might want to know there’s more reason to keep their mouths clean – to brush and floss – than ever,” said Richard Crout, D.M.D., Ph.D., an expert on gum disease and associate dean for research in the WVU School of Dentistry.
“You’ll not only be more likely to keep your teeth, but you’ll also reduce your risk of heart attack, stroke and memory loss.
“This could have great implications for health of our aging populations,” Crout said.
“With rates of Alzheimer’s skyrocketing, imagine the benefits of knowing that keeping the mouth free of infection could cut down on cases of dementia,” he added.
The team conducted their research on 270 elderly aged 70 and older. They were given oral exams and memory test.
The findings revealed that 23 per cent of the group suffers from mild to moderate memory loss.
“If you have a gum infection, you’ll have an increased level of inflammatory byproducts,” Crout explained.
“We’re looking for markers in the blood that show inflammation to see if there is a link to memory problems.
“We’d like to go full circle and do an intervention – to clean up some of the problems in the mouth and then see if the inflammatory markers go down,” he added.
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Sunday, May 24, 2009
Is your Mouth okay to kiss?
Whether you’re about to kiss your girlfriend or begin a job interview, you need to know whether your breath is sweet and clean.
Tel Aviv University (TAU) researchers have come up with a tiny breath test which lets you know whether malodorous bacteria are swarming all over your mouth. A blue result suggests you need a toothbrush. But if it’s clear, you’re “okay to kiss”.
The ‘OkayToKiss device’ comprises a colour indicator and saliva collector.
Scientists believed that only one population of bacteria (the gram-negative ones) break down the proteins in the mouth and produce foul odour.
But Mel Rosenberg, of TAU’s Faculty of Medicine, recently discovered that gram-positive population of bacteria are bad breath’s bacterial partner.
These bacteria appear to help the gram-negative ones by producing enzymes that chop sugary bits off the proteins that make them more easily degraded. This enzymatic activity, present in saliva, serves as the basis for the new test.
“All a user has to do is dab a little bit of saliva onto a small window of the ‘OkayToKiss’ kit,” explained Rosenberg.
“‘OkayToKiss’ will turn blue if a person has enzymes in the mouth produced by the gram-positive bacteria. The
presence of these enzymes means that the mouth is busily producing bacteria that foster nasty breath,” he said.
Apart from its social uses, the test can be used as an indicator of a person’s oral hygiene, encouraging better health habits, such as flossing, brushing the teeth, or scheduling that long-delayed visit to the dentist, said a TAU release.
