A four-year, $1.58 million grant from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research will allow a Case Western Reserve University School of Dental Medicine researcher to advance her work linking oral bacteria to foetal death.

The grant will support a study by Yiping Han, professor of periodontics, that focuses on the prevalent oral bacteria, Fusobacterium, and several of its subspecies. The bacteria keep the mouth's natural disease defences working, but can also cause diseases when they enter the bloodstream.