The community of microorganisms living in the oral cavity, known as the oral microbiota, has a significant impact on our oral health. Much like other groups of microbiomes residing on various parts of the body such as the skin, lungs and intestines, this collective community, as individualized as our fingerprints, has the ability to modulate our physiology and health, playing an often overlooked, but essential role in general well-being . Dysbiotic changes, in which this microbiota is thrown out of their balance, can thus lead to various oral and systemic diseases.
Luckily, the human microbiota displays, in composition and activity, a remarkable degree of resilience, despite frequent exposure to pathogenic, metabolic, and antimicrobial challenges. Thus a key question is how the human microbiota retains its compositional stability in symbiosis with its human host. Answering that question will help us with the development of novel early diagnostics, where we see stability derail before clinical damage becomes apparent. More importantly, it will allow us to develop preventive approaches to maintaining health, rather than repairing what has gone wrong, thus actively sustaining the symbiosis between the microbiota and our body.
This symposium will bring together scientists and clinicians from various fields and disciplines. The most recent findings on how different factors shape the microbe-host-ecosystem and how specific host-microbe interactions ensure stability of the human microbiota will be presented.
We will discuss how novel knowledge on the oral microbiota, as well as insights from microbiota on different parts of the human body, can be exploited for the benefit of our oral health.
Please visit the website for more information and registration.