Effects of tongue cleaning on bacterial flora in tongue coating and dental plaque: a crossover study

BACKGROUND: The effects of tongue cleaning on reconstruction of bacterial flora in dental plaque and tongue coating itself are obscure. We assessed changes in the amounts of total bacteria as well as Fusobacterium nucleatum in tongue coating and dental plaque specimens obtained with and without tongue cleaning. METHODS: We conducted a randomized examiner-blind crossover study using 30 volunteers (average 23.7 ± 3.2 years old) without periodontitis. After dividing randomly into 2 groups, 1 group was instructed to clean the tongue, while the other did not. On days 1 (baseline), 3, and 10, tongue coating and dental plaque samples were collected after recording tongue coating score (Winkel tongue coating index: WTCI). After a washout period of 3 weeks, the same examinations were performed with the subjects allocated to the alternate group. Genomic DNA was purified from the samples and applied to SYBR® Green-based real-time PCR to quantify the amounts of total bacteria and F. nucleatum. RESULTS: After 3 days, the WTCI score recovered to baseline, though the amount of total bacteria in tongue coating was significantly lower as compared to the baseline. In plaque samples, the bacterial amounts on day 3 and 10 were significantly lower than the baseline with and without tongue cleaning. Principal component analysis showed that variations of bacterial amounts in the tongue coating and dental plaque samples were independent from each other. Furthermore, we found a strong association between amounts of total bacteria and F. nucleatum in specimens both. CONCLUSIONS: Tongue cleaning reduced the amount of bacteria in tongue coating. However, the cleaning had no obvious contribution to inhibit dental plaque formation. Furthermore, recovery of the total bacterial amount induced an increase in F. nucleatum in both tongue coating and dental plaque. Thus, it is recommended that tongue cleaning and tooth brushing should both be performed for promoting oral health

Relationship between oral status and prevalence of periodontopathic bacteria on tongues of elderly individuals.

Colonization of periodontopathic bacteria is associated with increased risk for systemic diseases. However, few studies have investigated the relationships between oral status factors as well as health related-quality of life (HR-QOL) and the prevalence of such bacteria in elderly individuals. This study investigated the prevalence of Porphyromonas gingivalis, Prevotella intermedia, Treponema denticola, and Tannerella forsythia in 165 community-dwelling functionally independent 85-year-old Japanese individuals (93 dentate, 72 edentulous) and the relationship to oral status, including oral malodor and HR-QOL. All 4 of the studied periodontopathic bacteria were found more frequently in tongue coating samples from dentate than edentulous subjects, and the prevalence of P. gingivalis, P. intermedia, and T. denticola was significantly related to the number of teeth with a periodontal pocket depth (>/= 4 mm). These results suggest the existence of a stable circulation of periodontopathic bacteria between the gingival sulcus and tongue coating over time with teeth. In addition, the presence of teeth with a deep pocket and colonization of T. denticola were positively related to the level of CH(3)SH, while the number of present teeth positively contributed to HR-QOL, especially in regard to mental health. In conclusion, since dentate state can retain colonization of periodontopathic pathogens in the oral cavity, both periodontal treatment and tongue care are important for maintaining a healthy oral status in the elderly, and possibly results in avoidance of a risk for tooth loss and decline in HL-QOL, as well as protects from systemic diseases

Multimodal information fusion by correlation detection for video analysis tasks

O emprego de fusão prévia multimodal tem se mostrado eficaz em grande parte das tarefas de análise de vídeo existentes. Os métodos de fusão prévia encontrados na literatura foram desenvolvidos para melhorar a eficácia em tarefas específicas e, por esse motivo, são essencialmente vinculados a particularidades de suas respectivas tarefas fim. Com isso, alguns aspectos importantes para a produção de uma representação expressiva por meio de fusão de informação, bem como o potencial de generalização quanto ao domínio de aplicação foram negligenciados em pesquisas até o presente momento. Esta tese de doutorado propõe um método, M4InFus, destinado a realizar fusão de informação multimodal sem utilizar especificidades de domínio de aplicação. O método M4InFus é baseado em identificação de co-ocorrência de padrões unimodais em segmentos de vídeo e cobre lacunas existentes na área de fusão de informação multimodal. O método proposto foi aplicado em dois experimentos na tarefa de Segmentação Temporal de Vídeo em Cenas e em um experimento na tarefa de Classificação de Vídeo, promovendo ganhos em eficácia em ambas as tarefas. Considerando que a eficácia em tais tarefas é limitada pela Lacuna Semântica, há um indício de que representações geradas pelo método M4InFus são menos distantes da semântica contida nos segmentos de vídeo de origem. Este projeto de doutorado também gerou, como contribuição, a implementação do M4InFus e a formação de recursos humanos em níveis de doutorado e de iniciação científica.Multimodal early fusion has been shown to be effective on many of existing video analysis tasks. Available early fusion methods found in the literature had been developed to improve efficacy at specific tasks and, therefore, are essentially tied to particularities of their respective tasks. In this context, research on both, important aspects to compute meaningful representations by information fusion and generalization potential regarding application domain, have been negleted up to this date. This PhD thesis proposes M4InFus, a method intended to perform multimodal information fusion without using application domain specificities. M4InFus method is based on co-occurrence detection of unimodal patterns on video segments and covers existing gaps on multimodal information fusion area. The proposed method have been applied in two experiments on the Temporal Video Scene Segmentation task and one experiment on the Video Classification task, promoting efficacy gains in both tasks. Considering the efficacy in those tasks limited by the Semantic Gap, this information is a clue about the representations generated by the M4InFus method to be less distant from the semantics contained in the original video segments.This doctoral project also produced, as a contribution, an implementation of the M4InFus method and human resources formation on doctoral and undergraduate research levels

Yonemitsu M. Relationship of quantitative salivary levels of Streptococcus mutans and Streptococcus sobrinus in mothers to caries status and colonization of mutans streptococci in plaque in their 2.5-year-old children. Community Dent Oral Epidermiol

Relationship of quantitative salivary levels of Streptococcus mutans and S. sobrinus in mothers to caries status and colonization of mutans streptococci in plaque in their 2.5-year-old children The aim of this study was to assess the relationships of quantitative salivary levels of Streptococcus mutans and S. sobrinus in mothers with the colonization of mutans streptococci (MS) in plaque and caries status in their 2.5-year-old children. Furthermore, the dynamics of caries status in the children was evaluated in a 2-year follow-up survey. Methods: After oral examination of 54 mother-and-child pairs, the saliva samples from the mothers and the plaque samples from the children were collected. The levels (log DNA copies ⁄ ml saliva) of S. mutans and S. sobrinus were quantified using real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays, while MS in the plaque samples were detected using a cultivation method. In addition, 50 of the 54 children participated in a 2-year follow-up survey of caries prevalence. Results: In the 2.5-year-old children, the percentage of dft-positive subjects and mean number of dft were significantly higher in the MS(+) group when compared with the MS()) group. Findings from the 2-year follow-up survey indicated that MS(+) subjects had a persistently higher mean number of dft at 4.5 years. The 2.5-year-old children were divided into three groups based on the quantitative levels of salivary S. mutans and S. sobrinus in their mothers: those whose mothers had low levels of S. mutans (<4 log DNA copies ⁄ ml) and S. sobrinus (<2) (group 1); those whose mothers had a high level of S. mutans ( ‡4) and low level of S. sobrinus (<2) (group 2); and those whose mothers had high levels of both ( ‡4 and ‡2, respectively) (group 3). Among the three groups, the percentages of MS(+) and dft-positive children were highest in group 3 and lowest in group 1. Furthermore, multiple logistic regression analyses revealed that grouping the mothers based on salivary level of S. mutans and S. sobrinus was an efficient means to predict both MS colonization (OR = 2.96) and prevalence of dental caries (OR = 9.39) in children at 2.5 years of age. Conlusions: In the 54 mother-and-child pairs tested, the maternal salivary levels of S. mutans and S. sobrinus determined by real-time PCR were significantly related to MS colonization in plaque as well as dental caries in their children at 2.5 years of age. Thus, determination of maternal levels of both organisms using the present cut-off values is proposed as an efficient method to indicate the risks of maternal transmission of MS and childhood dental caries

The Effect of Eating Sea Cucumber Jelly on Candida Load in the Oral Cavity of Elderly Individuals in a Nursing Home

We conducted a double-blind randomized controlled study of elderly individuals in a nursing home to investigate the effect of the consumption of jelly containing sea cucumber on their oral Candida load. The jelly contained a hydrolysate of the sea cucumber Stichopus japonicus, which contained triterpene glycosides called holotoxins. The holotoxins worked as a fungicide, and their minimum inhibitory concentrations for Candida albicans were 7 µg/mL. Eight individuals in the nursing home took the sea cucumber jelly for a week and their oral Candida were counted before and after the intervention. Nine individuals took a control jelly without S. japonicus. The sea cucumber jelly showed inhibitory effects on the oral Candida. Thus, daily consumption of the S. japonicus jelly has the potential to reduce the oral Candida load in the elderly in nursing homes