The aesthetic impact of enamel fluorosis on Irish adolescents.

Objectives: To assess the impact of differing degrees of enamel fluorosis on dental aesthetics according to Irish adolescents. The same participants also aesthetically rated other variations in dental appearances including a carious lesion, bleached teeth and a demarcated opacity.

Methods: One hundred and fifty adolescents examined seven identical template photographs of an attractive dental smile displaying varying levels of enamel fluorosis (TF1, TF2, TF3), a demarcated opacity, no fluorosis (TF0), anterior caries and very white or bleached teeth.

Composition, variability, and temporal stability of the intestinal microbiota of the elderly.

Alterations in the human intestinal microbiota are linked to conditions including inflammatory bowel disease, irritable bowel syndrome, and obesity. The microbiota also undergoes substantial changes at the extremes of life, in infants and older people, the ramifications of which are still being explored. We applied pyrosequencing of over 40,000 16S rRNA gene V4 region amplicons per subject to characterize the fecal microbiota in 161 subjects aged 65 y and older and 9 younger control subjects.