DrThilini Jayasinghe

Dr Jayasinghe's research investigates how diet shapes the oral and gut microbiome, how the microbiome drives inflammation, and how that inflammation contributes to periodontal disease and linked systemic conditions. Her particular focus is fermentable dietary fibre and the short-chain fatty acids it produces, and their effect on periodontal inflammation and the oral-systemic inflammatory axis.

A central question in her work is how oral pathogenic bacteria and inflammatory mediators cross the oral epithelial barrier and enter the circulation, contributing to systemic inflammation relevant to conditions such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes. She investigates this through controlled human trials and preclinical models, combined with multi-omics analysis spanning metagenomics, metabolomics and gingival crevicular fluid proteomics.

Her collaborative interests extend the diet, microbiome and inflammation theme beyond the mouth. With colleagues she studies the gut microbiome and short-chain fatty acid metabolism in preclinical Alzheimer's disease, connecting her work on fibre-derived metabolites to brain health. She also examines the maternal oral microbiome in pregnancy, the oral and vaginal microbiome in women who have experienced miscarriage, and the vaginal microbiome in women with endometriosis, alongside the links between periodontal disease and cardiometabolic conditions such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.