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The mouth is the home of some of the most common maladies known to humankind, including tooth decay and gum disease. Research is now revealing myriad connections between oral health and our general well-being.
Wounds in the mouth heal faster than in skin — and without scarring. Could unravelling the mechanisms that drive regeneration in the oral cavity lead to better wound therapies?
Single-cell transcriptomics and protein expression analyses of salivary glands and gingiva, along with the detection of infectious virus and virus-specific antibodies in saliva from SARS-CoV-2-infected individuals, support a potential role for the oral cavity in COVID-19 pathogenesis.
Periodontitis has been causally linked to the development of other chronic inflammatory diseases outside the oral mucosa. In this Review, George Hajishengallis and Triantafyllos Chavakis consider the molecular basis of these links.
This Perspective highlights an accumulating body of literature that outlines a direct role for oral-associated bacteria in inflammatory bowel disease pathogenesis. The authors propose a model by which oral-associated species might expand in the inflamed intestinal environment to exacerbate inflammation.