About a year ago, actor and TV host Jenny McCarthy opened up about enduring nine mouth surgeries after a failed dental implant. Doctors eventually had to remove infected bone from her jaw. Her entire ordeal highlights a troubling question: Why can some dental implant infections be so difficult to treat?
This led to a deep infection in her jawbone due to which McCarthy had to spend a year on antibiotics.
McCarthy, then 52, told People magazine that her teeth and implants “were falling out”.
A study by researchers at Rutgers University in the US suggests that tiny particles released by certain type of dental implants can interfere with the body’s natural defences, allowing bacteria to survive while inflammation damages the surrounding bone. Scientists seem to have found an important clue now. McCarthy’s dental implants were ceramic, while the study talks about those made of titanium. The findings, published in the journal PNAS Nexus , could help explain why antibiotics often fail to stop a condition called peri-implantitis, an infection that affects the gums and bone around dental implants. For years, scientists have been trying to understand why these infections can be harder to treat than gum disease around natural teeth. In laboratory tests, immune cells exposed to titanium particles swallowed fewer than half as many bacteria as cells that had not encountered the particles.
However, the research is still at an early stage. Results in mice do not guarantee that the same approach will work in people. The team is now investigating potential drugs that target the same process in human cells.
