Oral Inflammations and Systemic Diseases

Dear Colleagues,

Oral infections occur frequently in humans and often lead to chronic inflammations affecting the teeth (i.e., caries), the gingival tissues surrounding the teeth (i.e., gingivitis and endodontic lesions), and the tooth-supporting structures (i.e., periodontitis). It has been proposed that these inflammations are not restricted to their specific sites in the oral cavity, but that they may have a negative impact also on the general health of the affected patients via increasing their risk for several widespread diseases, such as diabetes, coronary heart disease, peripheral arterial disease, ischemic stroke, and small vessel disease in the brain. At least four basic pathogenic mechanisms have been proposed that involve oral inflammations in the pathogenesis of these widespread diseases: (1) low level bacteremia, by which oral bacteria enter the blood stream and invade the body; (2) systemic inflammation induced by inflammatory mediators released from the sites of the oral inflammation into the blood stream; (3) autoimmunity to host proteins caused by the host immune response to specific components of oral pathogens; and (4) pathogenic effects resulting from specific bacterial toxins that are produced by oral pathogenic bacteria.

This Special Issue focuses on several aspects of the interaction between oral infections and widespread systemic diseases, and we invite contributions of reviews and/or original papers reporting recent efforts in this field.

Dr. Ghazal Aarabi
Prof. Dr. Udo Seedorf
Guest Editor

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