Bad Breath Research – Some Thoughts Going Forward
Copyright © 2019
The International Conference on Oral Malodour, held July 14-16, and hosted by UWE is wrapping up. Dr. Saliha Saad presided over three days of scientific camaraderie. The beautiful out-of-town location, the Tortworth Court Hotel contributed to the meeting. We had nothing more exciting to do than get to know one another and talk about science and life. And that was more than exciting!
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The meeting brought back to me memories of a similar conference, in 1993, where ISBOR was born. That multidisciplinary meeting also had forty participants. That meeting was also conducted in an atmosphere of friendship and collaboration. Just like this one.
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What else did I learn? Over coffee with John Greenman we discussed our ‘disagreement’ of over twenty years. In a gentle friendly way. After all, we are good friends. On the one hand, we both agree that bad breath is composed of sulfur and non-sulfur containing gases. We both agree that most of the odor comes from the tongue.
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But John believes that the odor comes from the anterior tongue dorsum. That is where he conducts his studies. That is where he samples bacteria for his research work. I, believe that the odor comes from the posterior are of the tongue dorsum, primarily from postnasal drip which gets stuck there in some people.
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But could it be that we are both right? That the anterior tongue dorsum is super-important? But not necessarily as the source of the odor. But rather it’s the oral ‘sponge’ that feeds the posterior region. That would explain experiments that show that application of antibacterials (metronidazole, active flavour compounds) to the anterior tongue dorsum reduces whole mouth malodor.
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This hypothesis is eminently testable. At the meeting, I also learned about new measurement instruments. Certainly the introduction of the Halimeter almost thirty years ago has created a market for other tabletop instruments for measuring bad breath-associated gases. Exciting!
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UWE has become the epicenter for oral malodor research, university-based product testing, and basic studies on bad breath in general. A perfect place to continue to have annual or bi-annual meetings with people who can challenge one another scientifically yet remain kind, caring and human.
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Published: Jul 16, 2019
Latest Revision: Jul 16, 2019
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Copyright © 2019
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