Carceral settings as institutional exposures in caries microbiome research
Ahmad Yusroni, Muhammad Khairul Anwar, Yuyun Eka Kartika Sari · 2026
Read Carceral settings as institutional exposures in caries microbiome research by Ahmad Yusroni, Muhammad Khairul Anwar, Yuyun Eka Kartika Sari (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13312824.txt.
Description
Ahmad Yusroni and co-authors write a 2026 letter to the editor about a study of dental decay microbes in elderly prisoners. The letter urges readers to treat the prison itself as part of the exposure. The original study compared saliva microbes in prisoners with and without cavities, a rare look at a little-studied population, and the letter writers welcome it while doubting its framing.
A restricted setting trims lifestyle variation, they argue. But it also patterns the microbial environment through fixed diet, scarce dental care, rationed hygiene supplies, fluoride access, antibiotics, and extraction habits, all set by the institution. Without recording those factors, microbe patterns risk being read as the person's own biology. The letter urges pairing future carceral microbiome work with a minimum institutional dataset covering attendance, supplies, diet rules, and treatment history. That would make results more interpretable and prevention planning sharper.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Ahmad Yusroni, Muhammad Khairul Anwar, Yuyun Eka Kartika Sari |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 2585 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |