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 “What this report does is continue the support of the idea that gum
disease is not just a matter of what happens to our teeth,” said Dr.
Leonard Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer for the American
Cancer Society.
Researchers performed dental exams on 7,466 individuals from
Mississippi, Maryland, Minnesota and North Carolina and then
monitored them for an average of 15 years. None of the participants
had cancer at the start of the study.
Fifteen years later, individuals with severe gum disease on the
dental exam had a 24 percent higher risk of developing any kind of
cancer, and more than double the risk of lung cancer, compared to
those with no or mild gum disease.
Odds of developing colorectal cancer were increased particularly for
nonsmokers with severe gum disease, the researchers found.
These findings, based on actual dental exams, are consistent with
prior studies that have used self-reports of gum disease, lead study
author Dominique Michaud, professor of public health and community
medicine at the Tuft’s School of Medicine, told Reuters Health.
The researchers took cancer risk factors into account, including
age, gender, weight status, smoking, race and socioeconomic status.
In the study, being older, male, black, less educated, obese or a
smoker was more common with advancing periodontitis severity.
Overall, researchers did not see links between periodontal disease
and breast cancer, prostate cancer or blood or lymphatic-related
cancers.
Nearly half all Americans over age 30 suffer from some form of gum
disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC). Also known as periodontal disease, the condition develops
when bacteria in the mouth infect tissue surrounding the tooth,
causing inflammation - which has long been associated with cancer
risk. Unchecked, gum disease can progress to tooth loss.
In the study, associations between gum disease and cancer were
generally weaker, or not apparent among black participants, except
for lung and colorectal cancers, the authors report in the Journal
of the National Cancer Institute.
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“We don’t have an answer for the differences we observed by race,”
Michaud said in an email.
Lichtenfeld, who was not involved in the study, said this could be
due to additional barriers black Americans might face compared to
their white counterparts.
“There are issues for black Americans such as access to care,
education and socioeconomic status. Although some of those factors
were controlled (in the study), others were not, and that may make a
sufficient difference such that periodontal disease may not be a
distinguishing characteristic among black Americans the same way it
is among white Americans.”
The study can’t prove that gum disease actually causes cancer.
Furthermore, given that the dental exam predated the diagnosis of
cancer, any faulty measurement of periodontal disease could produce
an under- or over-estimation of the correlation. Despite adjusting
for smoking dose and duration in participants, the authors also said
they could not rule out confounding by smoking, especially for lung
cancer.
In an email to Reuters Health, the American Dental Association
highlighted some factors that may have also influenced the findings:
“Both income and health insurance are very influential predictors of
whether someone can access timely and high quality dental or health
care, and both income and health insurance patterns relate to race
in the United States.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2EpgjjF Journal of the National Cancer
Institute, online January 12, 2018.
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