Dental plaque
Sugar and time shift a mixed film toward cavities and gum inflammation.
Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
Familiarity38
Medical weight70
Benefit30
Risk65
Research75
Live debate25
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Last reviewed Sources & creditsMedia creditsMethodology
Quick answers
Where should I start with Biofilms?
Read Identity → How they live → Body & health, then use compare rails.
Is this page advice for Biofilms?
Public-health education — not a care plan, prescription, or outbreak briefing.
What does the local lens add?
It names everyday desks for Change & defence before English norms look universal.
Are the scores a ranking of Biofilms?
No — editorial 0–100 browsing aids inside this atlas only.
How do I compare Biofilms to neighbours?
Use related cards and best-of / quiz rails after the first three chapters.
Which chapter is densest?
How they live and Body & health carry mechanisms; skim Identity first.
Mouth and skin already run films. Trouble starts when architecture meets sugar, a broken barrier or a plastic tube.
Device-related bloodstream infections are a hospital quality metric because films love lumens.
Body interfaces
Urinary catheter
A tube gives a highway from the outside world into the bladder.
Joint implant
A film on hardware can cause pain and loosening months after surgery.
Cystic fibrosis lungs
Thick mucus can host persistent communities; care is specialized and clinical.
Contact lenses
Poor case hygiene can let films ride onto the cornea.
Industrial pipes
Fouling and corrosion cost money; the same ecology appears in showers.
Whether to remove hardware belongs to clinicians, not this page.
Keep exploring
More in Change & defence
Mutation and variants
Populations of genomes, not cartoon villains — RNA viruses copy sloppily, and public-health names track clusters that spread.
Familiarity 92Antibiotic resistance
A shared drug budget under selection in hospitals, farms and wastewater — stewardship, not a lab manual.
Familiarity 85Vaccines and immunity
Antibodies, memory cells and community arithmetic — conceptual, not a prescription and not an anti-vaccine tract.
Familiarity 94Hygiene and balance
Clean water saves lives; missing old microbial partners is a separate, still-debated immune story.
Familiarity 70Horizontal gene transfer
Sideways DNA traffic — conjugation, transduction, transformation as names and history, not protocols.
Familiarity 45