This research from the Yale School of Medicine—which will be presented at the upcoming American Stroke Association International Stroke Conference—analyzed data from over 40,000 adults between 2014 and 2021. The researchers looked for differences in health outcomes over the study period and also screened the participants’ genetic material. Specifically, they looked at more than 105 genes known to be connected to poor oral health outcomes.
In a nutshell, the results showed that people with genes that increased their risk for poor oral health were more likely to have severe brain damage after a stroke.
The data showed that those with poor oral health suffered worse damage to the structure of the brain—defined as more than a 43% change in the structure after a stroke—than those without those genes that contribute to poor oral health. They also showed that those with a predisposition for poor oral health experienced a higher amount of damage to the white matter in the brain following stroke. White matter1 is essentially a large web of nerve fibers that exist in your brain and help different areas communicate with one another. White matter is important for thinking, memory, and cognition.
As one of the study authors Cyprien Rivier, M.D., M.S., said of these findings in a press release: “Poor oral health may cause declines in brain health, so we need to be extra careful with our oral hygiene because it has implications far beyond the mouth.”
