Abstract 17580: "Healthy Smile for a Healthy Heart": A National Study on the Correlation Between Periodontal Diseases and Coronary Artery Disease
Abbas Alshami, Ndausung Udongwo, Joseph Heaton, Timothy Donley, Brett Sealove- Physiology (medical)
- Cardiology and Cardiovascular Medicine
Introduction: Chronic inflammatory periodontal disease (CIPD) is a common disease of the supporting tissues of the teeth that manifest as swelling, bleeding, pain, and clinical attachment loss (CAL) upon periodontal examination. CIPD has been associated with a chronic inflammatory state, also a known risk factor for coronary artery disease (CAD).
Hypothesis: There is a possible correlation between CIPD and CAD.
Methods: We utilized the 2013-2014 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey database. We included participants aged 30 years and above who reported having gum disease and had undergone a periodontal examination. CAL measured in millimeters, was reported at six different locations around 28 teeth. To obtain national estimates, we conducted complex survey sample analyses, accounting for weights, clustering, and strata. Furthermore, we adjusted for well-known CAD risk factors in multivariate analyses.
Results: Our study included 184,010,722 participants; 7.3% had CAD (n=13,461,796), and 17.1% reported CIPD (n=31,425,382). Baseline Characteristics are presented in Table 1. The unadjusted rate of CAD was higher in patients with CIPD than those without CIPD [10.3% (n=3,238,995) vs 6.7% (n=10,222,801), p=0.018]. Similarly, average CAL was higher in patients with CAD (2.04 vs 1.62 mm, p<0.001). After adjusting for confounders listed in Table 1, CIPD was a significant predictor of CAD (OR 1.744, 95% CI 1.088-2.796, p=0.012). The average CAL of all the teeth also predicted CAD (OR 1.195, 95% CI 1.025-1.394, p=0.026).
Conclusions: Our data suggest that patients with reported CIPD had a 1.7 times higher risk of developing CAD. Similarly, each 1 mm increase in CAL leads to a 20% increased CAD risk (OR 1.2). Further prospective studies are needed to confirm these findings and to explore whether treatment of CIPD mitigates the increased CAD risk. These findings underscore the significance of optimizing dental health in patients with CAD.