Dentistry,  Methamphetamine

UCLA School of Dentistry Receives NIH Meth Mouth Research Grant

July 21, 2010 /
Examples of Meth Mouth

And, there is much more research required to break the cycle of methamphetamine addiction.

he UCLA School of Dentistry will use a $1.86 million award from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to expand research reported in the Journal of the American Dental Association on the relationship between methamphetamine use and increased dental disease.

“Given that dental disease is a prominent comorbidity of methamphetamine use, dental professionals are in a unique position to help in the early detection of undisclosed MA use and participate as integral members of a collaborative care team tending to those who use MA,” the UCLA research team said in JADA 2010 Mar; 141(3): 307-318.

Dr. Vivek Shetty, a professor of oral and maxillofacial surgery and the project’s principal investigator, aims to
build on research described in JADA as “one of the first systematic investigations of the meth mouth phenomenon.” More information on Methamphetamine Use and Oral Health (Meth Mouth) is available at www.ada.org/goto/meth.

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