A University of Iowa faculty member has received funding from the National Institutes of Health to investigate how obesity and other health conditions can affect oral health. 

Sukirth Ganesan, director of the Advanced Education Program in Periodontics and associate professor in the College of Dentistry and Dental Clinics, is the study’s lead investigator. 

Ganesan hopes the findings will help researchers understand the link between the body’s health and oral health, which could lead to earlier identification and ways to prevent disease for patients at higher risk. 

“If metabolic health improves, we hope that the oral determinants also change in a positive way,” he says. “Oral health is overall health, and it’s part of your body. What happens at the waistline can shape what we see at the gumline.” 

In prior NIH-funded research, Ganesan found that people with metabolic syndrome — named for a group of risk factors for heart disease, diabetes, and other health problems — had an oral environment similar to people with gum disease, despite the fact that the patients with metabolic syndrome had healthy gums. The findings suggest that body health may cause undesirable bacteria in the mouth before visible signs of oral disease appear. 

With the new funding, Ganesan’s research team seeks to understand how a person’s metabolic health changes the type of bacteria present in the mouth and the health effects from those bacteria. The researchers will track 240 patients over two years as they seek to improve their metabolic health through exercise, weight loss medications, improved diet, or surgery. 

The team will collect saliva, swabs, gum fluid, and stool samples to examine the bacterial strains present in the mouth and the gut. They’ll also look at metabolites — the products from metabolism — that these bacteria produce. 

Ganesan will lead a team that includes experts in endocrinology, bariatric surgery, nutrition and dietetics, immunology, computational biology, and biochemistry.

The five-year award from the National Institutes of Health is for $3.8 million.