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In oral cavity chronic inflammation has been observed at various stages of oral squamous cell carcinomas (OSCC). This inflammation could result from persistent mucosal or epithelial cell colonization by microorganisms. There is an increasing evidence of the involvement of oral bacteria in inflammation and warrant further studies on the association of bacteria in the progression of OSCC. The objective of this study was to evaluate the diversity and relative abundance of bacteria in the saliva of subjects with OSCC. Using 454 parallel DNA sequencing, ~58,000 PCR amplicons that span the V4-V5 hypervariable region of ribosomal RNAs from 5 subjects were sequenced. Members of 8 phyla (divisions) of bacteria were detected. The majority of classified sequences belonged to phyla, Firmicutes (45%) and Bacteroidetes (25%). Further, a total of 52 different genera containing approximately 860 (16.51%) known species were identified, 1077 (67%) sequences belonged to various uncultured bacteria or unclassified group. The species diversity estimates obtained with abundance-based coverage estimators (ACE) and Chao1 were greater than published analyses of other microbial profiles from the oral cavity. Fifteen unique phylotypes were present in all three OSCC subjects.

Objective-Risks associated with smoking and drinking are not necessarily constant over the multistage pathway to oral cancer. We investigated whether smoking and drinking patterns differ for persons with oral cancer (OC) relative to those with oral epithelial dysplasia (OED), a precancerous condition.Methods-Incident cases of OC and OED were interviewed using a questionnaire containing questions on smoking and drinking. Odds ratios (ORs) compared the odds of smoking and drinking among persons with OC relative to OED.Results-No adjusted ORs for smoking achieved statistical significance; however, most were <1.0. The odds of OC relative to OED increased with drinking level; the adjusted OR for 19+ drinks/week was 3.03 (1.56-5.87). Age drinking began and years of drinking were not notably different for OC and OED cases; a higher proportion of OC cases reported discontinuing alcohol for 9+ years before diagnosis. Conclusions-The relationship between smoking and OED was at least as strong as that for smoking and OC, suggesting that smoking may have its greatest impact on oral carcinogenesis prior

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This study revealed associations between the cognitive and functional status of the individual and aspects of oral health, that may contribute to a deeper understanding of the background of oral health status in older adults.

This study supports the association of both ethnicity/race and social status with any early childhood caries. The patterns of caries were each found to be associated with specific and different socioeconomic-demographic indicators. The practical importance of these findings is that global measurement of ECC, without regard to specific caries pattern, leads to the potential for substantial non-differential misclassification of disease. The consequence of this is the potential for important ECC-SES-ethnicity/race associations to be masked. This, in turn, decreases the ability of surveys and investigations to accurately identify sub-groups of the population at greatest risk of developing ECC.

Inflammation plays a significant role in Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathogenesis. Studies have shown that systemic, peripheral infections affect AD patients. Cognitive dysfunction is a consistent finding in AD and periodontal disease is a chronic, peripheral infection often resulting in tooth loss. We hypothesized that older adults with periodontal inflammation (PI) or many missing teeth would show impaired cognition compared to subjects without PI or with few missing teeth, and among subjects with PI, those with many missing teeth would show impaired cognition compared to those with few missing teeth. The effect of PI/tooth loss on cognitive function [measured by Digit Symbol (DST) and Block Design (BDT) tests] was assessed in 70-year old Danish subjects. We found: 1) subjects with PI obtained lower mean DST scores compared to subjects without PI (p < 0.05); 2) subjects with many missing teeth had lower mean DST and BDT scores compared to subjects with few missing teeth (p < 0.05); 3) the association of PI with DST and BDT scores was dependant on the number of missing teeth (interaction: p = 0.03 and p = 0.06); and 4) education and previous cognitive scores (age 50) were important covariates. Subjects with PI had significantly lower adjusted mean DST scores compared to subjects without PI. However for adjusted BDT, the significance held only for subjects with few missing teeth. No difference in the adjusted DST and BDT scores was seen between subjects with many missing teeth compared to those with few missing teeth. These results support the hypothesis that PI may affect cognition.

This chapter reviews the epidemiology of cancers of the oral cavity, pharynx, lip, and salivary glands. In the United States (1996–2000), invasive cancers of the OCP/lip/salivary gland account for 2.7% of cancers among men and 1.5% of cancers among women. It is estimated that 27,700 cases will be diagnosed with these malignancies in the United States in 2003 and about 7,200 will die from these cancers. The lifetime risk of being diagnosed with OCP/lip/salivary gland cancers for a US male is 1.4% and 0.7% for a US female.