A new study reveals that Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), which included Crohn's Disease and Ulcerative Colitis can be made worse by poor oral health.
Poor oral health has previously been proven to be associated with diabetes, cardio-vascular health and many other systemic diseases.
The study was carried out in collaboration by U-M Medical and Dental Schools. The disease is estimated to affect almost 3 million adults in the US alone.
Nobuhiko Kamada, PhD is an assistant professor of internal medicine in the division of gastroenterology, he has been studying the microflora of gut for years. Dr Kamada noted that there can be an emerging link in research literature between an overgrowth of foreign bacterial species in the guts of people with IBD and bacteria that are normally found in the mouth.
"I decided to approach the dental school to ask the question, does oral disease affect the severity of gastrointestinal diseases?" says Kamada.
The Prosposed Pathways!
There are two pathways by which the bacteria in the oral cavity appear to worsen the inflammation in the gut.
In the first pathway, periodontitis, leads to an imbalance in the normal healthy microbiome found in the oral cavity. This is due to increase in number of bacteria that causes periodontitis. Now these disease causing pathogens are proposed to travel from the oral cavity to the stomach. This alone may not be enough to set off gut inflammation but can aggravate the existing inflammation. "The normal gut microbiome resists colonisation by exogenous, or foreign, bacteria," says Kamada. "However, in mice with IBD, the healthy gut bacteria are disrupted, weakening their ability to resist disease-causing bacteria from the mouth”.
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