Oral Health The Key To Alzheimer’s Cure?

[Anonymous]

A major research grant will help scientists study the links between memory and oral health in a bid to establish control over Alzheimer’s disease. The news of a $1.3 million study to be carried out on thousands of participants has been welcomed by the UK’s leading oral health charity – the British Dental Health Foundation.

Research has long associated oral health with overall health problems, including dementia – though no studies have made clear how the state of the teeth and mouth affect mental function.

Last year researchers found a link between mild memory loss and gum disease* and the seven-figure grant will enable examination of medical records of thousands of Americans to further pursue the link.

Foundation chief executive Dr Nigel Carter welcomed the news saying: “Oral health and gum disease in particular has been increasingly linked to overall health through studies such as this exciting piece of research.

“The recent review of NHS dentistry suggested the government is committed to preventive care.

“It would be a great boost if scientists could prove preventive treatment could not only protect our teeth but also help prevent chronic diseases such as Alzheimer’s. “We will watch developments with interest and urge the public to make sure they look after their oral health with simple steps which can reduce the risk of gum disease. “Minimising the risks caused by poor oral hygiene is as simple as brushing teeth twice a day with a fluoride toothpaste and visiting the dentist regularly for professional check-ups.”

The US studies will be led by Dr Bei Wu of the University of North Carolina and Dr Richard Crout of the University of West Virginia, who will continue with a program testing oral health and memory in 273 people aged 70.

The new funding will establish larger studies looking for links between oral health and brain function over time, while scientists will also seek to establish a link between improved cognitive function and better oral hygiene through intervention to improve oral health.

In an interview this week Dr Crout, who has predicted that dentists may in future be in a position to administer memory tests on older patients, said: “to have overall good general health you need to have good oral health.”

Source
The British Dental Health Foundation

        

[sushantpatel_doc]

Its quite surprising to know that a basic thing like oral hygiene has such major implications..

        

[Drsumitra]

To build a tooth, a detailed recipe to instruct cells to differentiate towards proper lineages and form dental cells is needed. Researchers in the group of Professor Irma Thesleff at the Institute of Biotechnology in Helsinki, Finland have now found a marker for dental stem cells. They showed that the transcription factor Sox2 is specifically expressed in stem cells of the mouse front tooth.
Despite the development of new bioengineering protocols, building a tooth from stem cells remains a distant goal. Demand for it exists as loss of teeth affects oral health, quality of life, as well as one’s appearance. To build a tooth, a detailed recipe to instruct cells to differentiate towards proper lineages and form dental cells is needed. However, the study of stem cells requires their isolation and a lack of a specific marker has hindered studies so far.
Researchers in the group of Professor Irma Thesleff at the Institute of Biotechnology in Helsinki, Finland have now found a marker for dental stem cells. They showed that the transcription factor Sox2 is specifically expressed in stem cells of the mouse incisor (front tooth). The mouse incisor grows continuously throughout life and this growth is fueled by stem cells located at the base of the tooth. These cells offer an excellent model to study dental stem cells.
The researchers developed a method to record the division, movement, and specification of these cells. By tracing the descendants of genetically labeled cells, they also showed that Sox2 positive stem cells give rise to enamel-forming ameloblasts as well as other cell lineages of the tooth.
– Although human teeth don’t grow continuously, the mechanisms that control and regulate their growth are similar as in mouse teeth. Therefore, the discovery of Sox2 as a marker for dental stem cells is an important step toward developing a complete bioengineered tooth. In the future, it may be possible to grow new teeth from stem cells to replace lost ones, says researcher Emma Juuri, a co-author of the study

 

        

[Drsumitra]

Maintaining good oral health will lower the risk of dementia later in life, according to a new a study.

The University of California study showed that there was a 65-percent increase in the possibility of developing dementia for people who brushed their teeth less than once per day. Roughly 5,500 elderly people were studied during an 18-year period for this study.

Inflammation that results from gum disease-related bacteria is involved with several conditions, including stroke, heart disease and diabetes.

There are some studies that have stated that people with Alzheimer’s disease have a higher level of gum disease-related bacteria in their brains than people without Alzheimer’s. The thought process was that the bacteria from gum disease may get trapped in the brain, which would make the brain inflamed and cause damage.

That’s why Annlia Paganini-Hill wanted to conduct this study, to determine the long-term impact of dental health on cognitive function.

Nearly 5,500 residents of a California retirement home were studied from 1992 through 2010. The average age of the patients was 81, but the age range was from 52 to 105. None of the people had dementia when the study began, enabling them to respond to questions about their teeth and whether or not they wore dentures.

When the study was over and the information was poured through, 1,145 of the original participants either died or had some type of dementia.

One in roughly every 3.7 women who said she brushed her teeth less than once per day in 1992 developed dementia. Only about one in every 4.5 women who brushed her teeth at least once per day ended up developing dementia.

For the men, those that brushed less than once each day were only 22 percent likelier to have developed dementia. Men who wore dentures were nearly twice as likely to have dementia when compared to those who had all their teeth, or at least most of them.

The information was published in the Journal of American Geriatrics Society.

This study doesn’t suggest that brushing one’s teeth regularly will prevent dementia across the board and that if one doesn’t brush their teeth often enough that he or she will eventually develop dementia. Instead, it’s further evidence that good oral health will likely lead to good overall health.

 

        

[Drsumitra]

A Danish–American study has proven that incidences of Alzheimer’s disease can be traced back to chronic gum inflammation. According to the research team, patients with periodontal disease are at an increased risk of poorer cognitive function.
Researchers presumed that periodontal infection exacerbates inflammation in the brain and thus worsens dementia. They thus hypothesized that subjects with periodontal infection are at an increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
The first long-term study to establish a causal link between the two diseases was conducted at New York University and led by Dr. Angela Kamer, assistant professor of Periodontology and Implant Dentistry, in collaboration with Dr. Douglas E. Morse, associate professor at NYU College of Dentistry and a team of researchers in Denmark.
Kamer had already explored the role of periodontitis in Alzheimer’s disease through a pilot study conducted in 2008. Patients with chronic infections of the gum typically display high levels of antibodies. Kamer thus examined 18 Alzheimer patients and determined whether they had elevated levels of antibodies compared with the 16 control subjects. The study revealed that twice as many subjects with Alzheimer’s disease tested positive for the respective periodontal antibodies in their plasma.
The latest study, however, was based on the analysis of data on inflammation and cognitive function in 152 Danish subjects, for whom measures were available for both periodontal inflammation (at age 70) and cognitive function (at ages 50 and 70). The time span taken into account covered a 20-year period ending in 1984, when the subjects had all reached the age of 70.
The Digit Symbol Test was used to assess the subjects’ cognition, a neuropsychological test also used to detect cases of brain damage and dementia, which rates patients’ IQ and ability to link series of digits to a corresponding list of digit–symbol pairs.
Comparing cognitive functions at ages 50 and 70, Kamer found that periodontal inflammation at age 70 was strongly associated with a lower test score at the age of 70. Subjects with inflammation were nine times more likely to have lower scores than subjects without periodontal inflammation.
Kamer concluded that the results of the analysis suggest that periodontal inflammation is associated with lower cognitive function in older people. The researchers considered the study’s findings to be important for presymptomatic early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.
Kamer plans to conduct a follow-up study involving a more diverse group of subjects.
According to the study, more than 25 million people suffer from dementia worldwide, with 50 to 60 percent having Alzheimer’s disease.

 

        

[drsnehamaheshwari]

One of the biggest problems we are facing now, and certainly in the future, is dementia and Alzheimer disease. It is estimated that by the time we reach our mid-80s, 15% of Americans will have that diagnosis, and the cost is well over $5 billion and likely to rise.

 

Everything that has been tried to reduce that risk has pretty much failed. Crossword puzzles do not help, and neither do foods or nutritional supplements. The one thing that seems to make some difference is exercise. This was evaluated very recently in an article in Annals of Internal Medicine from a group at the Cooper Institute in Dallas, Texas.

 

This group has been interested in the importance of exercise in cardiovascular disease assessment and prevention since 1970. They have been at it a long time and analyzed long-term effects of exercise in thousands and thousands of individuals, based on Medicare claims data. For this study, they carefully evaluated risk factors and exercise abilities with a standard protocol—how many metabolic equivalents (METs) they achieved and maximal oxygen consumption (VO2), for example. Then they divided the groups into quintiles. The people in the highest quintile of fitness level were then compared with the people in the lowest quintile to see whether or not they developed Alzheimer disease.

 

The results are clear: Those in the highest quintile had a lower Alzheimer disease risk than those in the lowest quintile.

 

One problem with the study is the population they looked at. Almost all had a college education or more, almost all were white, and they were certainly in a higher socioeconomic stratum. How applicable is this to the general population?

 

Also important, however, is that they looked at midlife fitness — not when patients were older but during midlife. The average age of the people they evaluated was about 50 years. What they found is clear: If you have a high level of fitness in your 40s, or maybe even earlier than that, your likelihood of developing Alzheimer disease later on is definitely reduced.

 

What is the take-home message? Don’t wait until you have an event (people who had events previously were excluded); get yourself on the treadmill, put your running shoes on, row, whatever it is you want to do, but try to get your fitness level up high when you are in your 30s and 40s, because this is going to prevent you to some degree from having Alzheimer disease when you are in your 70s and 80s, or beyond, hopefully. 

        

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