To me the title of this article, and several points contained within, where overly broad.
They give the impression that _having_ microbes in your mouth and on your skin is a cancer risk, which is most definitely not the case.
The connection between the microbiome and cancer and heart disease is coming more to light. And the articles point that certain microbes may contribute to cancer risk sounds like another significant new finding.
But having a sterile environment in the mouth or on the skin is certainly detrimental to health.
Like the gut microbiome, it's the content that counts, not whether to have one or not...
The association between pathogens and cancer is under-appreciated, mostly due to limitations in detection methods.
For instance, it is not uncommon for cancer studies to design assays around non-oncogenic strains, or for assays to use primer sequences with binding sites mismatched to a large number of NCBI GenBank genomes.
Another example: studies relying on The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), which is a rich database for cancer investigations. However, the TCGA made a deliberate tradeoff to standardize quantification of eukaryotic coding transcripts but at the cost of excluding non-poly(A) transcripts like EBER1/2 and other viral non-coding RNAs -- thus potentially understating viral presence.
The real question always is: assuming causation, if you drastically improve the oral health of 1000 people, how many would you save from pancreatic cancer? The answer to this question in associative studies is very often in the single figures, or lower (i.e. fractions of people.)
Anything to create an excuse to provide better dental care for people, though. The chance of getting a gum infection that spreads to your brain and/or goes septic is actually quite high.
I've been saying what we actually need is universal dental care vs universal health care for over 15 years. Giving out universal health care without dental care is like changing the oil in a car but failing to see the tires aren't even on.
I heard horror stories from my mom who worked in a periodontist office (as receptionist) growing up. Really got me to care about oral health early on. Health really starts at the mouth. If you don't have a healthy mouth you'll never have a healthy body.
I am sure many more will be linked to our mouths and we will regret that countries with good free public healthcare don't include dental. People just cannot afford to go until it hurts which often means it is very bad already.
It's unsurprising that certain strains would lead to increased cancer risk. We've known about this with bacteria (H. Pylori and stomach cancer), viruses (HPV and genital cancers) and fungi (carcinogenic liver toxins) for a long time.
But I do somewhat wonder about the dental profession's "nuke it all" approach to the oral microbiome. We've largely moved away from that for other outside-facing body parts - it's recognised that for organs like skin, gut, vagina, scalp etc that there is such a thing as a healthy, balanced microbiome. I expect they'll get around to discovering the same for the mouth at some point - that if you have the right bacteria and don't overfeed them with massive amounts of glucose and fructose, that's broadly a healthier mouth than blasting everything to oblivion at every opportunity.
which begs the question that which daily mouthwash is a) broadband effective against many including the right pathogens c) long-time, safe/tolerable for long time daily use. Candidate being Chlorhexidine 0.06% - are there opinions on it?
People are talking about dental hygiene in this thread, but it’s only mentioned once in the article, and only to suggest that a small portion of the microbes associated with cancer were also associated with dental disease. We literally don’t know if using mouthwash or brushing for 30 seconds longer (the main differences in dental hygiene habits among people reading this) has any effect on cancer risk, so what’s the point of even posting this?
> scientists have uncovered a mechanism that could help explain this connection, finding that bacteria can travel through swallowed saliva into the pancreas
Except, this study didn't do that. It did shotgun sequencing and found a correlation between certain microbial species (some were fungal, not bacterial) and cancer risk. It *did not* demonstrate anything about mechanism.
Based on the way it's phrased, maybe this article is saying that previous studies have found a mechanism, and this study found the microbial culprits. Unfortunately, I don't have access to the full study to see if that's the case in its introduction or discussion. Even so, that's an incredibly misleading opening to the article.
People forget Breathing through the mouth is a recipe for poor oral microbes. This became mainstream when we gained softer foods and transitioned living to indoor places with high indoor air pollution. Normalize nose breathing again.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 31.2 ms ] threadThey give the impression that _having_ microbes in your mouth and on your skin is a cancer risk, which is most definitely not the case.
The connection between the microbiome and cancer and heart disease is coming more to light. And the articles point that certain microbes may contribute to cancer risk sounds like another significant new finding.
But having a sterile environment in the mouth or on the skin is certainly detrimental to health.
Like the gut microbiome, it's the content that counts, not whether to have one or not...
For instance, it is not uncommon for cancer studies to design assays around non-oncogenic strains, or for assays to use primer sequences with binding sites mismatched to a large number of NCBI GenBank genomes.
Another example: studies relying on The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), which is a rich database for cancer investigations. However, the TCGA made a deliberate tradeoff to standardize quantification of eukaryotic coding transcripts but at the cost of excluding non-poly(A) transcripts like EBER1/2 and other viral non-coding RNAs -- thus potentially understating viral presence.
Enjoy the rabbit hole. :)
Anything to create an excuse to provide better dental care for people, though. The chance of getting a gum infection that spreads to your brain and/or goes septic is actually quite high.
2) Here is an audio interview with one of the authors of the study: https://edhub.ama-assn.org/jn-learning/audio-player/19004027
I heard horror stories from my mom who worked in a periodontist office (as receptionist) growing up. Really got me to care about oral health early on. Health really starts at the mouth. If you don't have a healthy mouth you'll never have a healthy body.
But I do somewhat wonder about the dental profession's "nuke it all" approach to the oral microbiome. We've largely moved away from that for other outside-facing body parts - it's recognised that for organs like skin, gut, vagina, scalp etc that there is such a thing as a healthy, balanced microbiome. I expect they'll get around to discovering the same for the mouth at some point - that if you have the right bacteria and don't overfeed them with massive amounts of glucose and fructose, that's broadly a healthier mouth than blasting everything to oblivion at every opportunity.
Except, this study didn't do that. It did shotgun sequencing and found a correlation between certain microbial species (some were fungal, not bacterial) and cancer risk. It *did not* demonstrate anything about mechanism.
Based on the way it's phrased, maybe this article is saying that previous studies have found a mechanism, and this study found the microbial culprits. Unfortunately, I don't have access to the full study to see if that's the case in its introduction or discussion. Even so, that's an incredibly misleading opening to the article.