Benjamin Tenenbaum

Blood Studies in Periodontoclasia. II

One of the procedures for studying the etiology of periodontoclasia is to analyze blood for constituents which are known to undergo changes in content in disease. From time to time reports have appeared indicating higher than normal values for total calcium (1-7), total cholesterol (1, 2, 4, 8), uric acid (3, 5, 8, 9), sugar (1, 2, 4, 5, 6) and local phosphatase (10) in various percentages of periodontoclasia cases. Local phosphatase refers to phosphatase in gingival blood. Lower than normal values have been reported for vitamin C (11-14), erythrocyte count (15) and C02-combining power (4, 16). Recently Tenenbaum and Karshan (17) reported on the blood chemistry of 70 patients with advanced periodontoclasia, and of 22 persons who were free from this disease. On the basis of the percentage of cases in each group which gave values outside of the normal ranges as reported in the literature, they concluded that their results suggest that some systemic condition was one of the contributing factors in periodontoclasia in many of the subjects studied. This study is referred to as the first series when further mention of it is made in this report. In an extension of this investigation, 67 periodontoclasia cases, 15 to 58 years of age, and 32 control cases 18 to 54 years of age have been studied. In this series, which is referred to as the second series, the degree of periodontoclasia ranged from incipient to advanced. In addition to blood analyses, determinations were made of basal metabolism, and urinary tests were conducted to ascertain the possible presence of subclinical deficiencies of thiamin, riboflavin and nicotinic acid.