Immunology of oral candidiasis.

A successful pathogen is one that is able to effectively survive and evade detection by the host immune defense. Oral candidiasis has adopted strategies, which evade host defense and eventually cause disease in at-risk patients. Host defense against infections with Candida spp. depends on rapid activation of an acute inflammatory response by innate immunity, followed by an incremental stimulation of specific immune responses mediated by T-cells (cellular immunity) or B-cells (humoral immunity). Understanding these complex pathways of immune evasion can potentially contribute to the development of novel therapeutic strategies against oral candidiasis.