Malocclusion worsens survival following sepsis due to the disruption of the innate and acquired immunity

Abstract Sepsis is a major health care concern worldwide. Recently, frailty -physical, cognitive, and mental dysfunction- has been recognized as one of the poor prognostic factors for critically ill patients. Poor oral health is also recognized as an inducing factor of frailty, which is called “oral frailty.” However, few previous studies clarifies whether and how oral frailty does harm in septic condition. Therefore, we introduced an additional sepsis model into the tooth extraction mouse model to determine how malocclusion affect the immune response during sepsis. The group of sepsis with malocclusion had a significantly lower survival rate than the group of sepsis without malocclusion, and both neutrophil and T cell counts in the blood were also significantly lower. Therefore, it implies that tooth extraction impaired both innate and acquired immunity during sepsis. The implication of this study is to determine the immunological impact of tooth loss during sepsis.