THE ESSENTIAL
- 40% of French people say they attach “great importance” to their oral health, according to a Doctolib survey and the French Union for Oral Health.
- Brain abscesses affect 1 in 100,000 people per year in developed countries.
- Brain abscess is a pocket of pus inside the brain that causes headache, lethargy, fever, and neurological damage to a specific region of the body, such as weakness in the left arm, right leg.
Mouth hygiene has an impact on health in general: we knew the link between gum health and Alzheimer’s disease or that between an imbalance of oral bacteria and high blood pressure and strokes.
Thanks to a new study published in the Journal of Dentistrywe learn that the oral cavity could be a potential source of infection that would lead to brain abscesses.
Poor dental hygiene triples the risk of infection
To reach this conclusion, English researchers collected the medical data of 87 patients admitted to a hospital for a brain abscess, including 52 people who had not received an explanation for their abscess. Scientists found that this group of people were three times more likely to harbor oral bacteria that cause oral infections.
In particular, they had a significantly higher number of Streptococcus anginosusa bacterium common in dental abscesses and associated with pharyngitis, bacteremia and infections of the brain, lungs and liver, the authors report.
Brain health starts with good oral hygiene
“While many potential causes of brain abscess are recognized, the origin of the infection often remains clinically unidentified. However, it was surprising to frequently find bacteria present orally in brain abscesses of unexplained origin.“, confirms the study’s lead author, Holly Roy, clinical lecturer in neurosurgery at the National Institute for Health and Care Research at the University of Plymouth and University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust.
This discovery highlights the importance of improving oral hygiene and dental care to preserve brain health and its serious repercussions. Indeed, if the abscesses resulting from the presence of bacteria in the oral cavities are rare, they can be fatal if they are not treated.