Julie K. Yip

Periodontal disease adversely affects the survival of patients with end-stage renal disease

Periodontal disease is associated with cardiovascular disease and is thought to accelerate systemic atherosclerosis. Here we examined the relationship between periodontitis and cardiovascular disease mortality in outpatients on hemodialysis using a retrospective analysis of 168 adult patients in New York City and North Carolina. During 18 months of follow-up, cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality were determined from a centralized dialysis registry. One hundred patients had mild or no periodontal disease but the remaining 68 had moderate-to-severe disease defined as 2 or more teeth with at least 6 mm of inter-proximal attachment loss. At baseline, the proportion of males was significantly lower in the moderate-to-severe group. Compared with mild or no periodontal disease, moderate-to-severe disease was significantly associated with death from cardiovascular causes. Adjustment for age, gender, center and dialysis vintage, smoking status, and history of diabetes mellitus or hypertension did not diminish the strength of this association. Our findings suggest a need for larger studies to confirm this connection, along with intervention trials to determine if treating periodontitis reduces cardiovascular disease mortality in dialysis patients.

Severe Periodontitis Is Associated with Low Serum Albumin among Patients on Maintenance Hemodialysis Therapy

The relationship between periodontitis and two measures of systemic inflammation, serum albumin and C-reactive protein (CRP), were examined among patients who were receiving chronic outpatient hemodialysis. Adult patients at two locations, North Carolina and New York City, were evaluated by dentist examiners. Six sites per tooth (up to 32 teeth per patient) were examined. A periodontitis case was defined as > or = 60% of sites with attachment level > or = 4 mm. Multivariable logistic regression was used to determine the association of periodontitis with low serum albumin, defined as < 3.5 mg/dl, and with high CRP, defined as > 3.0 mg/dl. A total of 154 patients completed the study. The mean age was 54.6 yr (SD 13.3), and average duration of dialysis was 4.0 yr (3 mo to 16 yr). Eighty-six (54.6%) were men, and 89 (58.2%) were black. Common causes of end-stage kidney disease were hypertension (12.3%), diabetes (22.1%), glomerulonephritis (7.1%), and other (58.4%). The average number of teeth was 20.3 (SD 8.4). Thirty-five (23%) patients were periodontitis cases. Severe periodontitis was associated with low serum albumin (odds ratio 8.20; 95% confidence interval 1.61 to 41.82; P = 0.01) compared with individuals without severe periodontitis disease after adjustment for age, gender, race, diabetes, hypertension, body mass index, smoking, study site, total cholesterol, serum calcium, serum phosphorus, and normalized protein catabolic rate. There was no observed association of severe periodontitis with CRP. Investigation of the potential contribution of periodontitis to serum albumin and possibly to morbidity and mortality among patients with end-stage kidney disease seems warranted.

Destructive periodontal diseases in minority populations.

Disparities in the prevalence and severity of destructive periodontal diseases have been reported for American minority populations and have raised the following questions. Are differences in destructive periodontal disease prevalence and severity due to genetic or other confounding variables associated with ethnicity race? Do risk factors for destructive periodontal diseases differ among American minority populations or differ from the population at large? Answers to these questions will have profound impact on the direction of future research and the allocation of resources to address disparities in destructive periodontal diseases in American minority populations. Risk assessment studies that examined a set of clinical, demographic, immunologic, and microbiologic parameters of Asian Americans, African Americans, and Hispanic Americans resident in the greater New York City region suggest that occupational status, monitored as a surrogate variable for socioeconomic status, may be a more robust risk factor than ethnicity/race for destructive periodontal diseases in these populations.