Gastric and duodenal ulcers, periodontal disease, and risk of bladder cancer in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study

Relationship between oral health literacy and oral health-related quality of life in patients with bladder cancer

Introduction

Bladder cancer is one of the most important diseases that threatens oral and dental health due to its nature and side effects of chemotherapy. Therefore, the present study was conducted to investigate the relationship between oral health literacy and oral health-related quality of life in patients with bladder cancer.

Methods

This cross-sectional study was conducted on patients with bladder cancer in Ahvaz, 2023. Subjects were selected randomly from the patients those were registered in Cancer Registry Center in Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical sciences and invited to Golestan Hospital for data collection through clinical evaluation, the Oral Health Literacy Adult Questionnaire (OHL-AQ), and the Oral Health Impact Profile-14 (OHIP-14PER) questionnaire. The data were analyzed using Pearson correlation coefficient, independent t-test, and analysis of variance.

Results

The number of participants was 194. The mean oral health literacy in patients with bladder cancer was 9.74 ± 2.39, indicating insufficient oral health literacy. A significant association was observed between OHL-AQ and DMFT index, but no significant association was found between OHIP-14PER and DMFT index. Furthermore, a significant correlation was found between OHL-AQ and OHIP-14PER (r = -0.68) in patients with bladder cancer.

Conclusion

Based on the findings of the present study, all dimensions of oral health literacy have correlation with the oral health-related quality of life in patients with bladder cancer. Therefore, adopting oral health behaviors and increasing oral health literacy can be the best way to improve the oral health-related quality of life to among patients with bladder cancer.

Patients with periodontitis might increase the risk of urologic cancers: a bidirectional two-sample Mendelian randomization study

BACKGROUND

Numerous observational epidemiological studies have reported a bidirectional relationship between periodontitis and urological cancers. However, the causal link between these two phenotypes remains uncertain. This study aimed to examine the bidirectional causal association between periodontitis and four types of urological tumors, specifically kidney cancer (KC), prostate cancer (PC), bladder cancer (BC), and testis cancer (TC).

METHODS

Based on large-scale genome-wide association study (GWAS) data, we utilized the two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) approach to evaluate causal relationships between periodontitis and urological cancers. Several MR methods covering various consistency assumptions were applied in this study, including contamination mixture and Robust Adjusted Profile Score to obtain robust results. Summary-level data of individuals with European ancestry were extracted from the UK Biobank, the Kaiser GERA cohorts, and the FinnGen consortium.

RESULTS

Our findings revealed significant positive genetic correlations between periodontitis and kidney cancer (OR 1.287; 95% CI 1.04, 1.594; P = 0.020). We did not find a significant association of periodontitis on prostate cancer, bladder cancer, and testis cancer. In reverse MR, no significant results were observed supporting the effect of urologic cancers on periodontitis (all P > 0.05).

CONCLUSION

Our study provides the evidence of a potential causal relationship between periodontitis and kidney cancer. However, large-scale studies are warranted to confirm and elucidate the underlying mechanisms of this association.

Oral microbiota in the oral-genitourinary axis: identifying periodontitis as a potential risk of genitourinary cancers

Periodontitis has been proposed as a novel risk factor of genitourinary cancers: although periodontitis and genitourinary cancers are two totally distinct types of disorders, epidemiological and clinical studies, have established associations between them. Dysbiosis of oral microbiota has already been established as a major factor contributing to periodontitis. Recent emerging epidemiological evidence and the detection of oral microbiota in genitourinary organs indicate the presence of an oral-genitourinary axis and oral microbiota may be involved in the pathogenesis of genitourinary cancers. Therefore, oral microbiota provides the bridge between periodontitis and genitourinary cancers. We have carried out this narrative review which summarizes epidemiological studies exploring the association between periodontitis and genitourinary cancers. We have also highlighted the current evidence demonstrating the capacity of oral microbiota to regulate almost all hallmarks of cancer, and proposed the potential mechanisms of oral microbiota in the development of genitourinary cancers.