Adults who have gum disease can transmit it to their children, a new study in Brazil has found.
Researchers at the University of Campinas in Sao Paulo found that the oral microbiome of parents can be transmitted to their children, even if good oral health is maintained, Dentistry Magazine reports. The research was published in the Journal of Clinical Periodontology.
Explaining that the poor gum health of parents is a key factor in the “subgingival microbial colonisation” of their kids, lead author of the study Mabelle de Freitas Monteiro noted: “Dysbiotic microbiota acquired by children of periodontitis patients at an early age are resilient to shift.”
She argued that this finding should be used by dentists to apply “more direct approaches” to oral care, since knowing periodontal disease is contagious is “an incentive to use preventative treatment” as well as acting early to diagnose and mitigate the problem.
This research could provide parents suffering with poor gum health with another very good reason to see a dentist in Bishops Waltham.
Another reason, which was also highlighted in the research by the Sao Paulo team, is that sufferers of periodontitis are three times more vulnerable to suffering serious complications if they contract Covid-19 than those without the condition and nine times as likely to die.
While these findings are particularly serious in Brazil, where infections and deaths are surging, they remains relevant in the UK, where deaths are still occurring at a rate of over 30 a day.
The Brazilian study is just the latest of many to link gum disease with a range of other, non-oral illnesses.
Another recent study by the New York University College of Dentistry found a potential link between gum disease and Alzheimer’s disease.
Swabs taken from cognitively normal patients found that those with ‘good’ bacteria like corbynebacterium and actinomyces were less likely to have high levels of amyloid in their cerebrospinal fluid than those with ‘bad’ bacteria like prevotella and porphyromonas.
Elevated levels of amyloid are a potential indicator of future disease, leading report author Dr Angela Kamer to suggest healthier bacteria could fight the onset of the condition.