PEOPLE who suffer from bad breath may lack “good bacteria” that keep foul-smelling microorganisms at bay. The finding raises the prospect that halitosis could be treated with a pro-biotic rather than an antibacterial agent.
Bruce Paster and colleagues from the Forsyth Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, used gene sequencing to identify 92 strains of bug that live on people’s tongues, 29 of which were previously unknown. People suffering from halitosis, defined as having a high level of sulphurous chemicals in their breath, lacked the three bacterial strains most common in sweet-smelling mouths, and instead harboured a host of new bugs. The…
