Microbiota

Factors Contributing to Oral Health Disparities in Appalachia

Despite advances in preventive care, oral diseases (primarily dental caries and periodontal disease) remain significant public health issues. Dental caries remains the most common chronic disease of childhood, five times more common than asthma and seven times more common than environmental allergies, with more than 40% of children exhibiting caries when they enter kindergarten. Although overall caries prevalence has declined over the last 40 years, dental caries in the primary dentition and mean caries rates in children ages 2-11 have increased markedly over the past 12 years. Childhood caries is a serious public health issue because of associated health problems and because disparities in oral health have led to substantially higher average disease prevalence among children in poverty and in under-served racial and ethnic groups. The disparity in childhood caries in the United States is exemplified by the fact that, among children aged 6 to 8 years, the prevalence of untreated decay is 72 percent in Native Americans, 43 percent in Hispanics, 36 percent in African Americans, and 26 percent in whites. The role of the University of Michigan in this study conducted in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh and University of West Virginia is to test the hypothesis that cariogenesis results from overgrowth of relatively few species against the alternative that cariogenesis is a consequence of complex combinations of many species, i.e., of community structure. A secondary hypothesis is that similarity in microbial composition between any pair of samples is correlated with similarity in known risk factors, such as host genetics, environmental factors, and source of microbiota. Further, the degree of correlation between community similarity and environmental risk factors will depend on dental health status.

Oral and Vaginal Microbes, Human Genotype, and Preterm Birth