Oral Health in Women During Preconception and Pregnancy: Implications for Birth Outcomes and Infant Oral Health

The mouth is an obvious portal of entry to the body, and oral health reflects and influences general health and well being. Maternal oral health has significant implications for birth outcomes and infant oral health. Maternal periodontal disease, that is, a chronic infection of the gingiva and supporting tooth structures, has been associated with preterm birth, development of preeclampsia, and delivery of a small-for-gestational age infant. Maternal oral flora is transmitted to the newborn infant, and increased cariogenic flora in the mother predisposes the infant to the development of caries. It is intriguing to consider preconception, pregnancy, or intrapartum treatment of oral health conditions as a mechanism to improve women's oral and general health, pregnancy outcomes, and their children's dental health. However, given the relationship between oral health and general health, oral health care should be a goal in its own right for all individuals. Regardless of the potential for improved oral health to improve pregnancy outcomes, public policies that support comprehensive dental services for vulnerable women of childbearing age should be expanded so that their own oral and general health is safeguarded and their children's risk of caries is reduced. Oral health promotion should include education of women and their health care providers ways to prevent oral disease from occurring, and referral for dental services when disease is present

Studying sulfur functional groups in Norway spruce year rings using S L-edge total electron yield spectroscopy

Profiles of the major sulfur functional groups in mature Norway spruce wood tissue have been established for the first time. The big challenge was the development of a method suitable for sulfur speciation in samples with very low sulfur content (<100 ppm). This became possible by synchrotron X-ray absorption spectroscopy at the sulfur L-edge in total electron yield (TEY) detection mode with thin gold-coated wood slices. Functional groups were identified using sulfur compound spectra as fingerprints. Latewood of single year rings revealed metabolic plausible sulfur forms, particularly inorganic sulfide, organic disulfide, methylthiol, and highly oxidized sulfur. Form-specific profiles with Norway spruces from three different Swiss forest sites revealed high, but hitherto little-noticed, sulfur intensities attributable to natural heartwood formation and a common, but physiologically unexpected maximum around year ring 1986 with trees from the industrialized Swiss Plateau. It is hypothesized whether it may have resulted from the huge reduction in sulfur emissions after 1980 due to Swiss policy. Comparison with total S content profiles from optical emission spectroscopy underlined the more accurate and temporally better resolved TEY data with single wood year rings and it opened novel insights into the wood cell chemistry (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Parity & Untreated Dental Caries in US Women

While parity (number of children) reportedly is related to tooth loss, the relationship between parity and dental caries has not been extensively investigated. We used path analysis to test a theoretical model that specified that parity influences dental caries levels through dental care, psycho- social factors, and dental health damaging behaviors in 2635 women selected from the NHANES III dataset. We found that while increased parity was not associated with a greater level of total caries (DFS), parity was related to untreated dental caries (DS). The mechanisms by which parity is related to caries, however, remain undefined. Further investigation is warranted to determine if disparities in dental caries among women are due to differences in parity and the likely changes that parallel these reproductive choices

Optical phase contrast imaging of human retinal cells by changing the tissue refractive index

Purpose : Based on oblique partially coherent illumination of transparent samples, we developed a simple custom Optical Phase Imaging (OPI) microscope providing a label-free, semi-quantitative phase contrast imaging. The aim of this study was to explore this ex-vivo modality for retinal imaging and correlate it with standard clinical images and fluorescence microscopy. Methods : Multimodal macular imaging was performed on the flat-mounted retina of an eye presenting an epiretinal membrane with cystoid macular edema, enucleated for a peripheral melanoma. After glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) - aquaporin (AQP)-4 – collagen (Col)-IV co-immuno-labeling and nuclei staining, the retina was cleared by index matching in a medium of refractive index (RI) 1.46 to decrease scattering for high-resolution deep-tissue ex vivo imaging. We performed a comparison of the clinical examinations obtained by Optical Coherence Tomography-Angiography and fluorescein angiography before enucleation, with the images obtained with confocal microscopy and OPI microscopy. Ex-vivo imaging of the retina mounted in a medium with a lower RI (1.40), close to the mean RI of Muller glial cell (MGC), was then repeated to better view the latter cells. Results : The retinal vessels were used as landmarks for correlating all imaging modalities. OPI microscopy allowed for different contrast imaging depending on the RI of the mounting medium. With the high RI medium (1.46), deep contrast imaging of nuclei and intraretinal cysts was obtained. The solution with a RI of 1.4 provided an improvement in the contrast of the retinal structures, from the inner layer (AQP4-positive MGC, epi-retinal membrane, nerve fibers surrounded by GFAP-positive astrocytes) to the photoreceptor segments. No AQP4 labeling was observed inside the cyst. AQP4-positive, GFAP-negative cells were visualized on the ColIV-labeled epi-retinal membrane, demonstrating that the membrane is made of retinal Muller glial cells. Conclusions : This morphological correlative imaging study demonstrated OPI on numerous cellular structures of a human retina by tuning the tissue RI. This label-free in-depth imaging modality offers a new research tool to study the cellular origin of retinal diseases