Dr. Joseph Stolman is no stranger to being a guinea pig.
A professor at Mass General, where he interned following his 1955 graduation from the Harvard School of Dental Medicine, asked him for a chunk of his healthy cheek tissue for a study on a mouth condition that could lead to oral cancer.
After many years of teaching and practicing periodontics in Connecticut, and well into his retirement, Stolman continues to participate in Harvard’s health professional study, which each year poses detailed questions about his eating and health habits.
So Stolman agreed right away when his 63-year-old son, Steven, asked if he d like to join a local coronavirus vaccine trial that he and his husband were set to take part in.
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CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Dec. 23, 2020 /PRNewswire/ Daphne E. Schneider, MD, is being recognized by Continental Who s Who as a Top Geriatrician in the field of Medicine for her exceptional contributions with Cambridge Health Alliance.
Committed to serving the underserved population, Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA) has established its reputation as a vibrant and innovative health system. It provides high quality, essential services like primary care, specialty care, hospital care, emergency services, maternity care, and behavioral health in convenient neighborhood locations in Cambridge, Somerville, and Boston s metro-north region. With over 140,000 patients, CHA offers seamless access to advanced care for rare or complex conditions at its clinical partners such as Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Mass. General Hospital for Children (MGHfC). Additionally, CHA is a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Public
(AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)
The COVID-19 pandemic has negatively impacted patients across the country by limiting access to quality health care. Unfortunately, for millions of Americans, health care access was already inhibited before the pandemic. Moreover, access to quality dental care was not a luxury all Americans had before the onslaught of COVID-19, especially those living in rural areas.
According to the American Dental Association, 42 percent of Americans don’t see a dentist as often as they would like. Yet, 85 percent of Americans believe that oral health is very or extremely important to overall health. And approximately 60 percent of the nation’s dental health professional shortage areas are in rural America, according to a 2020 report.
Lipid mediators can enhance regeneration of inflamed periodontal tissue
Maresin and resolvin, produced by the body from omega-3 fatty acids, can help repair tissue damaged by periodontal disease. A recent study shows that even in the presence of inflammation they stimulate periodontal ligament stem cells. The periodontal ligament is one of the structures lost in severe cases of the disease.
The study was part of the PhD research of Emmanuel Albuquerque de Souza at the University of São Paulo s Dental School (FO-USP) in Brazil and was conducted at the Forsyth Institute, an affiliate of the Harvard School of Dental Medicine in the United States, with a scholarship from FAPESP (São Paulo Research Foundation ).
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From the perspective of A. Murat Eren, PhD, the mouth is the perfect place to study microbial communities. Not only is it the beginning of the GI tract, but it s also a very special and small environment that s microbially diverse enough that we can really start to answer interesting questions about microbiomes and their evolution, said Eren, an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Chicago. There s a surprising amount of site specificity, in that you find defined patterns of microbes in different areas of the mouth the microbes associated with the tongue are very different from those on the plaque on your teeth, he continued. Your tongue microbes are more similar to those living on someone else s tongue than they are to those living in your throat or on your gums!