Source: www.curetoday.com Author: Alex Biese Among patients with squamous cell head and neck carcinoma, oral microbiome is associated with severity of oral mucositis (OM), an after-effect of radiotherapy and chemotherapy which effects nearly all patients with head and neck cancer (HNC), according to recent study findings from a team at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. “Our study suggests that the oral microbiome plays an important role in the longitudinal patterns of OM and the potential interaction between the oral microenvironment and the development of OM in patients with HNC,” the researchers wrote in a study published in the journal Cancer. Drawing on data from 142 adult patients — 91% male, with an average age of 57.6 years and a mean BMI of 29.1, 80% of whom had oropharyngeal carcinoma and 75% of whom received chemoradiation — newly diagnosed with locoregional squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck who were treated at MD Anderson Cancer Center between March 2016 and September 2020, researchers collected samples from patients at the baseline prior to treatment, weekly during treatment, during the clinic visit at the conclusion of treatment and after the termination of treatment. The American Academy of Oral Medicine cites high-dose chemotherapy and localized high-dose radiation therapy to the head and neck region as the main risk factors for developing painful mouth sores also referred to as oral mucositis. “These treatments effectively target the rapidly dividing cancer cells, but also inadvertently affect normal healthy cells that rapidly turnover, such [...]