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.34The main reason for the c

Written byRodrigo pez

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"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, PhDUniversity of Aarhus, ...

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