Background: Contemporary neurobiology, periodontal medicine, and immunology are now focusing on the relationship between chronic periodontitis and systemic diseases, which also include Alzheimer’s disease (AD). However a causative relationship between dementia and periodontitis has yet to be confirmed.Objective: The aim of the study was to determine whether periodontal health status and cognitive abilities are correlated with the relative changes in systemic measures of pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines as a reflection of systemic inflammation. We hypothesized that poor periodontal health status may be associated with cognitive impairment and dementia via the exacerbation of systemic inflammation.Methods: Based on the periodontal and psychiatric examinations and the cytokine levels produced by unstimulated and LPS-stimulated PBL isolated from 128 participants, we have examined if the coexisting of these two clinically described conditions may have influence on the systemic inflammation. Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and Bleeding on Probing (BoP) test results were combined into the one mathematical function U, which determines the severity of specific condition, called Cognitive and periodontal impairment state. Similarly, the levels of cytokines were combined into the one mathematical function V, whose value determines the level of Inflammatory state. The correlation between U and V was determined.Results: These results confirm that the presence of cognitive decline and the additional source of pro-inflammatory mediators, like periodontal health problems, aggravate the systemic inflammation.Conclusion: It is most likely that the comorbidity of these two disorders may deepen the cognitive impairment, and neurodegenerative lesions and advance to dementia and AD.

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International audienceThis study was performed to estimate the effect of heptavalent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV7) on the pneumonia admission rate in children younger than 5 years of age, after the introduction of routine 2+1 dose schedule immunization. We compared the pneumonia admission rate (number of cases per 1,000 population) 2 years before and 2 years after the introduction of PCV7 in 2006. Only children with radiologically confirmed pneumonia were analyzed. The vaccination rate in the analyzed periods was around 99%. In the period preceding the implementation of PCV7, the average pneumonia admission rate was 41.48/1,000 and 6.15/1,000 for 1-year-old and 2-4-year-old children, respectively. Statistical analysis showed a significant fall in this rate in two consecutive years after PCV7 implementation ( < 0.0000001 for 1-year-old and  = 0.011 for 2-4-year-old children, respectively). In the first year of vaccination, the admission number decreased in these two groups by about 65 and 23%, respectively. In the second year, only a few percent fall in the admission rate was noted. In children younger than 2 years of age, the age group targeted for vaccination, pneumonia-related healthcare utilization declined substantially following PCV7 introduction. These results suggest that PCV7 may play an important role in reducing the burden of pneumonia in Poland

The B-cell activator factor (BAFF)/BAFF receptor (BAFF-R) axis seems to play an important role in the development and progression of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). Here, we investigated the association of eight single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the BAFF (TNFSF13B) and BAFF-R (TNFRSF13C) genes with risk of sporadic CLL in a group of 439 CLL patients and 477 controls. We also examined the correlation between selected SNPs and CLL clinical parameters as well as BAFF plasma levels and intracellular BAFF expression. Our results point to a possible association between the rs9514828 (CT vs. CC + TT; OR = 0.74; CI 95 % = 0.57; 0.97; p = 0.022) and rs1041569 (AT vs. AA + TT; OR = 0.72; CI 95 % = 0.54; 0.95; p = 0.021) of BAFF gene and rs61756766 (CC vs. CT; OR = 2.03; CI 95 % = 1.03; 3.99; p = 0.03) of BAFF-R gene and CLL risk. Additionally, we observed that homozygotes rs1041569 AA and TT had a slightly higher risk (HR = 1.12) for the need of treatment in comparison to AT heterozygotes. In conclusion, our results indicate that SNPs in BAFF and BAFF-R genes may be considered as potential CLL risk factors.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13277-016-5182-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.