{"id":242233,"date":"2026-08-05T01:44:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T06:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/restoring-saliva-flow-may-improve-oral-health-in-down-syndrome"},"modified":"2026-08-05T01:44:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T06:44:10","slug":"restoring-saliva-flow-may-improve-oral-health-in-down-syndrome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/restoring-saliva-flow-may-improve-oral-health-in-down-syndrome","title":{"rendered":"Restoring Saliva Flow May Improve Oral Health in Down Syndrome"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/restoring-saliva-flow-may-improve-oral-health-in-down-syndrome.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>However, Carpenter was not entirely convinced that hyposalivation drives periodontitis. \u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s much evidence for that in\u2026literature about human studies,\u201d he said. Instead, he said that inflammation\u2014which is present in Dp16 salivary glands\u2014could cause hyposalivation. \u201cThere\u2019s lots of literature that shows that inflammatory cells can affect salivary secretion,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n<p>According to Yule, next steps could include looking at whether dysregulated calcium signaling\u2014which is linked with several other diseases\u2014also underlies other Down syndrome-related complications like Alzheimer\u2019s disease. While drugs targeting calcium signaling could potentially help, there is a complexity to it, he noted. \u201cKnowing what the target is [is] good, but the fact that the target is almost universal in cells, then that makes you think about whether it\u2019s something that could be targeted,\u201d explained Yule.<\/p>\n<p>Lacruz agreed that disrupted calcium signaling occurs in other tissues as well. \u201cUnderstanding why calcium is dysregulated is an important part of what we need to do [next],\u201d he said. More work needs to be done to translate the findings to the clinic, \u201cbut we see that as a way forward to potentially impacting the lives of individuals with Down syndrome,\u201d said Lacruz.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>However, Carpenter was not entirely convinced that hyposalivation drives periodontitis. \u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s much evidence for that in\u2026literature about human studies,\u201d he said. Instead, he said that inflammation\u2014which is present in Dp16 salivary glands\u2014could cause hyposalivation. \u201cThere\u2019s lots of literature that shows that inflammatory cells can affect salivary secretion,\u201d he noted. According to Yule, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1495,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-health","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242233\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}