Periodontal Disease Linked To Cancer

July 10, 2008

For years now periodontal disease, more commonly know as gum disease, has been linked through extensive research to heart disease, diabetes, stroke, respiratory infections, osteopenia (low bone mass) and preterm low birth weight babies. Now new research studies show a significant increase in the rate of cancer in patients who have periodontal disease. This study continues to discredit the old premise that periodontal disease is a fairly benign localized condition. It is now clearer than ever that periodontal disease is serious infection that not only compromises a patient’s oral health by causing inflammation, erythema, edema, bone loss, and tooth loss it has systemic ramifications on a patient’s overall health as well. These studies and their data demonstrate quite clearly how serious an infection periodontal disease is and that it should be recognized as such by the entire health care community as well as patients. Many oral infections and especially the bacteria that cause periodontal disease enters the patient’s blood stream and cause complications in many of the organ systems they invade. No longer is it valid to shrug off periodontal disease as just a mild gum condition, it’s a serious infection and needs to acknowledged and treated as such.

In this current study male heath professionals were followed and tract for nearly 20 years. In the end the research results showed that those participants who had periodontal disease had a 14 percent overall greater risk of developing cancer compared to the participants who did not have periodontal disease. After controlling for other risk factors such as smoking, periodontal disease was significantly associated with an increase of lung, kidney, pancreatic, and hematological (blood) cancers. Researchers have know for some time that patients with periodontal disease also have higher levels of inflammation in their blood than patients who don’t have periodontal disease. Now inflammation in a patients blood is being established as a well-known risk factor for certain types of cancer, as well as heart disease, diabetes and many other systemic health conditions. Until this study many researchers thought that whatever causes inflammation in the body might cause periodontal diseases and cancer independently. Now a clear link between periodontal disease systemic inflammation and cancer has been established.

      The goal of this research was to determine whether or not periodontal disease was an independent risk factor that could cause and increase in the rates of cancer. Researchers used data on a large study of male doctors and other health care professionals between the ages of 40 to 75. The study began at Harvard University in 1986. It included nearly 50,000 patients who were required to fill out health surveys which included information on periodontal disease, bone loss, the number of their teeth and tooth loss and followed them for more than 17 years. More than 5,700 of the health care professionals developed cancer during the duration of the study. Researchers found that men who had periodontal disease had a 14 percent higher risk of developing cancer than those patients that didn’t have periodontal disease.

    The data generated by this study showed that men with periodontal disease had a 36 percent greater risk of lung cancer, a 49 percent higher risk of kidney cancer, a 54 percent higher risk of pancreatic cancer, a 50 percent higher risk of blood cancers (such as non-Hodgkin lymphoma, leukemia or multiple myeloma) compared to patients who did not have periodontal disease. Additionally patients who had fewer than 16 teeth at the start of the study had a 70 percent higher risk of lung cancer than patients who with more than 25 teeth.

    Periodontal disease is a virulent infection with extremely significant systemic health ramifications and needs to be recognized and treated as such by the health care community and patients. Delaying of forgoing proper oral treatment could lead to several life threatening complications. So don’t delay seek the help of a dental profession before it hurts.

About the Author:

Joseph Preziosi Jr., DMD
New Jersey Dentist
website: New Jersey Periodontics