NEW YORK (Reuters Health) May 17 Two studies published this month provide additional evidence that treating gum disease in pregnant women may prevent preterm birth. “These data suggested that periodontal treatment should be included in prenatal care programs,” conclude Dr. Catia M. Gazolla of Vale do Rio Verde University in Tres Coracoes and colleagues, who authored one of the studies. Both reports appear in the May issue of the Journal
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) April 4 Detecting head and neck cancer early, when the odds of successful treatment are best, may be as simple as gargling with saline and spitting in a cup, according to a study conducted by a Miami, Florida-based research team. Oral rinsing flushes out a protein called CD44 — a known biomarker for cancers of the head and neck. It also detects altered DNA related to
WASHINGTON (Reuters), April 30 – Sugary foods and drinks and nonfluoridated bottled water may be helping to rot the teeth of more young U.S. children, reversing four decades of progress against tooth decay, U.S. health officials said on Monday. An estimated 28% of U.S. children ages 2 to 5 had a cavity in at least one baby tooth between 1999 and 2004, the National Center for Health Statistics said. This
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) July 30 The pain killer Paracetamol, known as acetaminophen in the U.S. and sold under the trade names Tylenol in the U.S. and Panadol in the U.K., is an effective treatment for the pain following wisdom tooth extraction, according to a review of 21 studies that used the drug versus a placebo or an inactive substance. “It could be considered more readily by dentist and patients
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) March 16 Photodynamic therapy (PDT) transiently reduces the progression of experimentally induced periodontal disease in rats, researchers from Brazil report in the March issue of the Journal of Periodontology. In 120 Wistar rats, Dr. Valdir Gouveia Garcia from Sao Paulo State University and colleagues placed ligatures at the first mandibular molar to induce periodontal disease including accumulation of plaque, local bone loss, and inflammatory reactions. They
Chances are that dentists won’t have to worry about siting a magnet in their offices in the near future, but can the specialty use MRI to its advantage? Yes, if the structure in question is the temporomandibular joint (TMJ). “Particularly, we look at this disk in the TMJ because (MRI) is the only way we can see the disk. MRI gives you exquisite soft-tissue imaging that you can’t get with
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) April 16 Pentoxifylline therapy provides only limited efficacy against recurrent aphthous stomatitis and should not be considered a first-line agent, new research indicates. However, the drug may be considered if other treatments prove unsuccessful. As researchers note in the April issue of Archives of Dermatology, pentoxifylline has effects similar to both thalidomide and colchicine, two agents that have proven effective in some patients with recurrent aphthous
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) Feb 19 Swiss-Swedish Nobel Biocare’s Teeth-in-an-Hour implant system may carry more risk of complications than conventional methods, an abstract of a study by Sweden’s Karolinska Institute shows. The study examined 31 patients treated using the method, which uses computer modeling to reduce implant installation time. Complications such as the loss of fixtures and the need for adjustments occurred for nearly a third of the patients. Nobel Biocare could
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) March 3 Men with prostate cancer who are undergoing androgen deprivation therapy have a more than three-fold increased risk of periodontal disease compared with those who are not on androgen deprivation therapy. Men on hormonal deprivation therapy should be referred to a periodontist for follow-up during this phase of treatment, investigators at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, report in the March issue of The Journal of
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) March 17 An interligamentary injection of fentanyl provides superior pain relief in dental debridement when added to standard local anesthesia than does local anesthesia alone, Egyptian endodontists report in the February Journal of Pain and Symptom Management. Standard pain relief in dental debridement relies on interligamentary injections of mepivacaine and epinephrine. However, local analgesia is often inadequate because the acid environment created by the inflammation prevents
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Feb 14 Periodontal disease is associated with the development of overt nephropathy and end-stage renal disease (ESRD) in patients with type 2 diabetes, according to a study published in the February issue of Diabetes Care. Dr. Wendy A. Shultis, of the National Institutes of Health in Phoenix, and colleagues studied 529 type 2 diabetic subjects living in the Gila River Indian Community who were at least
NEW YORK (Reuters Health), May 2 Even with strict enforcement of infection control, hepatitis B virus (HBV) was transmitted from one patient to another when they both underwent oral surgery in the same office, on the same day, public health officials report. The index case was a 60-year-old woman with joint pain, swelling, and fatigue that began in February 2002. She had no traditional HBV risk factors, the investigators report