“Vaping” increases the risk of tooth decay, tooth loss and even pre-cancerous lesions – breaking latest news

After much controversy about the health dangers of e-cigarettes came out on JAMA Network one studio del National Institute of Dental and Cranio facial Research (NIDCR) of the United States pointing a finger at a risk not yet considered much
who runs who uses the so-called vape
: increase in gum disease, precancerous oral lesions; perialveolar bone excavation, dentin flaking and/or tooth loss due to caries or gingivitis
, plus bleeding after brushing or flossing increased by 27%. To find out 16,000 subjects of both sexes were monitored for 6 years comparing vapers and smokers of cigarettes or cigars. Regular cigarettes showed a 33% increased risk for gum disease and 35-43% for tooth loss, while cigar use more than doubled the risk for precancerous disease and oral lesions.

Oral biofilm

The exposure to
vape of e-cigarettes is instead more insidious
because it turns into a real food aid for oral diners who, by excessively proliferating, lead to the damages mentioned above: the flavored vapors of the e-cigarettes that enter the oral cavity are immediately broken down by the bacteria in the mouth which result in overfeeding daily. A firm buccal microbial biofilm is formed more rapidly than with traditional smoking, leading to the development of one chronic inflammatory picture: comparing the oral health of those who had vaped for only 5 months with those who smoked for at least 5 years, it was also observed that, despite a shorter exposure in terms of time, inflammation in the former was equivalent to that of long-term smokers , indicating that with the vape the bacterial action is accelerated.

Selection of the worst strains

What is altered is the entire microbiota of the oral cavity with the creation of an environment that favors the growth of the opportunistic pathogen Streptococcus mutansknown to cause cavity. The figure confirms what was indicated in April on Microbiology Spectrumthe Journal of the American Society for Microbiology by another group of researchers at the University of Orlando in California who exposed such diners to both liquids and aerosols from e-cigarettes with and without nicotine or menthol flavor streptococcus that abound in the mouth of each of us. The growth of strains of blood streptococcus from gordonii was inhibited, while that of mutans streptococcus was not affected at all, thus obtaining a better chance against the other streptococci compared to which it also demonstrated that it can adhere more strongly to OKF6 buccal keratinocytes which make up most of the buccal epithelium .

In clinical practice

Also in December, JADA, the Journal of the American Dental Association, published a study on 13,000 patients from 5 US centers who, after noting the high association between the use of electronic cigarettes or vaping and caries riskhave recommended that this vice should not only always be included in the anamnestic questionnaire that the dentist must do when visiting a patient, but should now be considered routinely among the risk factors for the development of caries.