Effects of smoking on the prevalence and intraoral distribution of Candida albicans

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Abstract
To find out whether smoking affected the prevalence and intraoral distribution of C. albicans, swabs and saliva samples from 100 healthy persons, smokers and nonsmokers, were cultured for the presence of this fungus. The prevalence was the same (35%) in smokers and nonsmokers. Among carriers, the mean concentration of C. albicans colong-forming units in saliva of smokers was twice that of nonsmokers, and the isolation frequency of C. albicans at each of 5 mucosal sites was also higher in smokers. A wide variation was found, and these differences were not significant at the 0.05 level. Men were carriers more often than women (P < 0.025), and the mucosal site from which C. albicans was recovered most often was the posterior dorsum of the tongue. Although it had previously been claimed that cigarette smoking influenced the carrier state of C. albicans, the present study suggested that the effect was only slight.