Gum disease may up stroke risk
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Making regular visits to the dentist not only protects the teeth, it also may protect the carotid arteries—the main blood vessels leading to the brain.
Study findings presented this past weekend in Brisbane, Australia at a gathering of the International Association for Dental Research hint that gum disease may contribute to clogged carotids, leading to an increased risk of stroke.
Chronic inflammation arising from dental disease has been implicated in the development of atherosclerosis or hardening of the arteries—a key risk factor for stroke. Advanced carotid artery blockages contain calcium, and can be imaged when a dentist takes a panoramic x-ray of the teeth.
Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles used panoramic x-rays to quantify the degree of dental disease seen in 18 individuals with carotid artery clogs and 18 without these blockages who were matched for age, sex, and stroke risk factors such as body weight, smoking history, blood pressure, cholesterol and diabetes.
They found that dental disease, as determined by the number of teeth with decay, missing teeth, and the amount of bone loss around the teeth, was much more prevalent in people with carotid atheromas, as the clogs are called, than in those without.
“The main finding is that patients with atheromas have greater amounts of active dental disease than age-matched controls with similar atherosclerotic risk factors,” Dr. Evelyn Chung from the UCLA School of Dentistry in Los Angeles told Reuters Health.
“Untreated dental disease may in some way accelerate the atherosclerotic process,” Chung noted. “Therefore patients should visit their dentists for continued care to remove infections.”
“We believe that these results correlate well with other studies that have only hinted at the relationship between dental disease burden and atherosclerosis,” Chung added.
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