When I read the title for this article from REDORBIT NEWS (http://www.redorbit.com/news/display/?id=1715005) I was interested in what they had to say. It took 3 minutes to read and with each line I was increasingly disenchanted with it. The article is about a study done based on data from 1,137 men who had full mouth X-rays and periodontal probing done at each tooth every three years. There were follow up exams for an average of 24 years. (I was impressed with the length of the study) The study concluded that periodontal bone loss was associated with the incidence of cerebrovascular disease. It is also stated that this association "was independent of cardiovascular risk factors and was much stronger among men younger than age 65."
They state the association was independent of cardiovascular risk factors but don't explain that any further. I would like to know what risk factors they looked at and compared.
They imply there is a strong association between periodontal disease and cerebrovascular disease, but I am not completely buying it. I find it hard to believe periodontal disease causes cerebrovascular disease. I wonder if an unhealthy lifestyle lead to both periodontal bone loss and cerebrovascular disease independently and it's just a coincidence they show up together.
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Disenchanted is a good description of how I felt as well; it was nothing magical. I believe that not knowing if these problems are a coincidence is at the heart of what these studies are looking at. However it is probable that gum disease causes atherosclerosis and in turn stroke. What if the bacteria causing gum disease cause toxins to be released into the blood stream? Maybe these toxins cause inflammation of the vasculature promoting atherosclerosis and boom, you get a stroke. Just a thought, either way I am down with flossing and more power to non-smokers.
ReplyDeleteI like your theory and it's probably true. I was thinking the same thing until they said it was "independent" of other cardiovasular risk factors. That's where I was thrown off because as far as I know atherosclerosis is major cardiovascular risk factor. But maybe it was a poor choice of words on their part, or more likely a lack of explaination.
ReplyDeleteIt's always good to ask whether this is a case of correlation instead of causation (the authors of the paper even suggest that the association may be "predominantly non-causal" - http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/122380386/abstract). The researchers used a model eliminating the effects of a huge range of factors associated with cardiovascular disease: "age, BMI, HDL, total cholesterol, triglycerides, diagnosis of hypertension, mean systolic blood pressure, mean diastolic
ReplyDeleteblood pressure, diabetes diagnosis, daily alcohol consumption, comprehensive smoking index, marital status, and baseline measures
of education, occupation and income" - Apparently there is a factor, either from periodontal disease or that also causes periodontal disease, that has little effect on any of the other indicators.
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