Teeth and Health

"Toothsome Directions in Research"¹ focuses on the idea that "the mouth harbors oral infections that may negatively affect one's overall health," ignoring that this belief resulted in unfounded tooth extractions in the past.² Although many studies exist on the trendy systemic-oral disease connection, little evidence supports a causal link between oral infections and poor pregnancy outcomes or cardiovascular disease, and fairly good epidemiologic arguments challenge it.³⁴

The main reason for the controversy is that oral and systemic health outcomes are necessarily linked by upstream factors in a causal net that is difficult to disentangle.

Another view reveals the mouth as a rather complex multilevel scenario with the unique situation of highly mineralized organs integrated in the body while constantly exposed to the environment. This offers a versatile model for biofilm and inflammation research as well as for the study of the dynamics of mineralization-demineralization processes.

Rodrigo López,...