Does chronic periodontitis cause coronary heart disease?
Hujoel PP Department of Dental Public Health Sciences, School of Dentistry, Department of Epidemiology, Box 357475, University of Washington, Seattle, Wash. 98195, USA. hujoel@u.washington.edu BACKGROUND: Chronic periodontitis, or CP, has been associated with coronary heart disease, or CHD. This article reviews the available prospective CP-CHD evidence. LITERATURE REVIEWED: In nine cohort studies, CP was associated with a 15 percent greater risk of developing CHD. Conclusions from individual studies depended on study characteristics. Summary risk estimates for studies controlling for smoking intensity (five of nine studies) or health awareness (two of nine studies) or studies with more than 600 CHD events (three of nine studies) suggest that CP is either not at all or weakly associated with CHD. Summary risk estimates for the studies that did not control for these factors or that examined an insufficient number of CHD events reported a weak increase in CHD risk associated with CP (20 p
