A type of bacteria that causes dental plaque was found in 50% of colon cancers

[nrau]

My dentist has been on me for years that flossing is important for your health for more than just teeth. He explained to me recently the role it plays in toughening up your gums (essentially callusing your gums from the repeated abrasion of the dental floss) so that bacteria cannot thrive in there, which they otherwise easily do. And that this bacteria can cause you all kinds of health issues, including cancer.

If you search around you'll find a lot of articles from the dental community that talk about similar benefits from flossing.

After years of being lazy and ignoring their advice, this finally got me into regularly flossing!

[generic92034]

What percentage of your gum surface do you expect to floss in a session?

[Gibbon1]

Coworker didn't go to the dentist for 30 years. Then needed a bunch of dental work to clear out a chronic infection before he could have surgery to replace a damaged heart valve. I'd heard that infections can spread from gums to your heart. This is the first case I've seen in the wild where that happened.

[jwells89]

It’s something I need to get better about, but man, it’s so tedious and if I try to do something else while flossing in invariably do a bad job at flossing.

[flenserboy]

Here's an interesting data point: a while back, my dentist noted that my teeth had significantly less plaque than the last time I'd had a cleaning. I'd changed over to a low-carb diet in the interim, & they stayed in good shape between that cleaning & the one after that. I've seen similar reports from others. Could it be that plaque is a problem far more because of diet (sugars, grains) than because of insufficient flossing? It would be worth a study, especially if clear results came of it one way or the other.

[galdosdi]

This has been common knowledge since before I was a kid in the 1990s, when the local dentist on the block would give out apples and toothbrushes instead of candy on halloween, to the disappointment of many kids. And I don't think my local dentist was the only one.

Soda (and beer) in particular is one of the worst, perfectly designed to destroy your teeth since it's not just highly sweet, but also acidic and also a liquid and thus able to coat every nook and cranny

[capitainenemo]

FWIW, my dentist regularly comments that I have little to no plaque buildup. I don't floss. I eat a carb heavy diet, but complex carbs, few simple sugars/fructose. Also eat just once a day which might play into it.

[winrid]

I would say yes, and I think it's pretty common knowledge. Personally, my wife didn't have plaque buildup or dental problems for over 10yrs, so she never went to the dentist. After she moved to the US and started eating sugar she had to regularly visit the dentist.

[MattGaiser]

I thought this was fairly common knowledge. Dentists have been against sweets/white bread/pop for a long time.

[basisword]

There's a lot of positivity in this article about how this knowledge could help develop new drugs. But it seems the current reality is that this bacteria is becoming more common and blocks current cancer drugs. Can anyone with more knowledge on this explain further? Are outlooks getting worse until we find something that can deal with the bacteria discussed in the article?

[boring-alterego]

Maybe with this we can combine teeth into normal insurance.

[vkou]

Dental insurance isn't actually insurance.

In insurance, you win, and are made whole when you are unlucky enough to suffer from a low-frequency, high-cost event.

With dental 'insurance', you always pay partially out of pocket, and as soon as you hit a (rather small) cap, you pay the rest entirely out of pocket.

It's not an insurance, it's a limited-access subscription service.

[dham]

I was just talking about this a few months ago. In my opinion, single-payer dental insurance should be provided before health insurance. If a country has single payer but provides no dental insurance, it's a waste, as a lot of issues start in the mouth. We're at the forefront of a lot of this right now (as well as gut health).

[callalex]

I have taken to calling them luxury bones. For some reason that seems to bother people around me.

[Loughla]

Honestly it's more likely that we'll pay higher premiums if we didn't have separate dental insurance.

[rain_iwakura]

Have there been any studies that show that people treated with antibiotics against F. Nucleatum showed improved outcomes in any of comorbid diseases? I'm not saying it would actually improve anything but would be interesting to see. I assume there isn't enough momentum to run a study like that.

[manmal]

As long as the pathogen lives on in dental biofilm, antibiotics might have a hard time reaching it - some forms of biofilm are not really penetrated by antibiotics (one reason why H Pylori is so hard to get rid of). From there it can just spread again when the round is finished.

It’s not even clear that this strain only builds biofilm in the oral cavity. Biofilm in the GI tract has just recently become a field of interest.

[clarada]

And I bet H2O was found in 100% of colon cancers.

[meatmanek]

Indeed, it would have been nice to know what percentage of the "half of whom did not have cancer" had this bacteria in their stool samples.

But they do imply later that the number should be low by stating "The bacteria is usually only found in the mouth, far from the colon."

[A_D_E_P_T]

That the F.nucleatum bacterium is associated with colon cancer has been known for some time, e.g.: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27876571/

It is also associated with "poor rates of both overall survival and progression-free survival" in cervical cancer: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33197886/

And it is "associated with shorter survival" when found in esophageal cancer: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27769987/

It is also linked to gastric cancer: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-18596-0

All in all, it's obviously a pretty nasty little customer. It might be worth screening for it, and attempting to eliminate it if possible.

[toomuchtodo]

Vaccine candidate?

[Am4TIfIsER0ppos]

> it was unclear how it could withstand the journey through the gut

Boy do I have great news for them about a group of people with a proclivity of putting their mouths where they shouldn't.

[xen2xen1]

Toddlers? That was my first thought..

[wewtyflakes]

What group of people?

[playerm1]

I prefer syrup

[swatcoder]

I assume I saw this downvoted because people get defensive about intimacies they enjoy or because of the snarky tone, but this is actually a very astute insight into a recent cultural change that might legitimately play some role.

It wasn't a very common practice in earlier generations, it became an increasingly common practice in newer generations, and the shift could very easily produce unstudied consequences to health at scale (whether this or other things).

[eweise]

you want to at the end of the centipede?

[jjk166]

So you're saying it is now scientifically proven that butt-chugging mouthwash both prevents and cures cancer, and that young people especially benefit?

[blipvert]

Given the high alcohol content of mouthwash, this seems like a good way to get very drunk very quickly

[culopatin]

The only thing you could extrapolate is that using mouth wash may reduce the activity of that bacteria. Anything else would have to be proven.

[sva_]

I don't think mouthwash is selective like that

[ggm]

Read up on throat and mouth cancer from mouthwash