Periodontal Disease Independently Associated With White Matter Hyperintensity Volume

 

Science is finding more and more links into how oral pathologies affect the entire human body.  In recent years, dentists have been trying to bring greater attention to the 'mouth-body connection' and as a result more and more scientific studies and literature are focusing on the oral systemic connection.  

A lot of these studies focus on specific situations which is terrific because those studies are helping us not only understand that the oral systemic connection exists, but also helps us understand how dental professionals can tailor our treatment more specifically to the needs of at risk patients.

Yesterday I was rooting around on the Internet, as I tend to do, and I came across a study published on Neurology.org with the title "Periodontal Disease Independently Associated With White Matter Hyperintensity Volume".   I won't try to completely explain the study since you can follow that link and get more out of reading it than I could put together here.  However, the takeaway is that the study found periodontal disease (PD) is statistically related to cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD).  Basically PD is a contributing factor to disease in the small blood vessels in the brain.

So now we have "one more brick in the wall" of the oral systemic connection.  This is obviously of great importance.

I also came across another paper on Neurology.org that was titled "Combined Influence of Dental Caries and Periodontal Disease on Ischemic Stroke Risk".  The takeaway from this is "Co-occurring PD and dental caries were independently associated with increased risk of ischemic stroke and MACEs. Regular dental care may reduce this risk by improving oral health. Limitations include reliance on one-time dental assessment and residual confounding."  Basically, PD increased the risk, dental caries increased the risk, and PD combined with dental caries had the highest risk.  

For while now there has been a growing body of literature that has found that the bacteria in PD contributes to all kinds of adverse health.  Lately, I've also seen some studies that show patients that have lots of caries also are more susceptible to adverse health situations.  Now we're seeing that having both perio disease *and* caries simultaneously increases those risks even more.

If this area is of interest to you, I've got a podcast interview with Dr. Ed Zuckerberg scheduled in about a month to discuss the oral systemic connection.  He has done a really deep dive on this topic and is incredibly knowledgable about it.  When the podcast is available for viewing, I'll be sure to post about it here.