Source: www.hemonctoday.com
Author: staff
Results of a study involving 473 participants showed that periodontitis was linked with the development of squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck.
Researchers conducted a hospital-based case-control study between June 1999 and November 2005. The study involved 266 patients with head and neck cancer treated at the Roswell Park Cancer Center’s department of dentistry and maxillofacial prosthetics, and 207 healthy participants.
The researchers said that after adjusting for age at diagnosis, gender, race/ethnicity, marital status, smoking status, alcohol use and number of missing teeth, each millimeter of alveolar bone loss was associated with a more than fourfold increased risk of SCCHN (OR=4.36; 95% CI, 3.16-6.01). When researchers evaluated disease at specific head and neck sites, they found strength of the association was higher in the oral cavity (OR=4.52; 95% CI, 3.03-6.75) compared with the oropharynx (OR=3.64; 95% CI, 2.54-5.22) and larynx (OR=2.72; 95% CI, 1.78-4.16).
The researchers also said that there was a link between smoking and alveolar bone loss (P=.03), although the association between alveolar bone loss and SCCHN was weaker in current smokers (OR=2.85) compared with former smokers (OR=7.59) and never smokers (OR=5.96).
Alcohol use was not found to be a significant risk factor. The researchers said the association between alveolar bone loss and SCCHN was similar in drinkers and nondrinkers.
Source:
Tezal M. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2009;doi:10.1158/1055-9965.EPI-09-0334.
September 9th, 2009 at 9:49 pm
How may of the people with perio caused bone loss were smokers? How many were not? What correlations were there between things when that was factored in? Since tobacco is a leading cause of OSCC, what makes the researchers believe that perio (measured as bone loss) and NOT the current or previous use of tobacco was the causative factor?
There is some significant bias in how this was reported, but of course it has now virally spread all over web sties potentially misleading the public as to what is a valid risk factor and what is not.
People that engage in one risk factor likely have other lifestyle risk factor issues. People who eat fatty foods and have poor diets also do not engage in exercise and have corresponding collateral issues health issues, just as smokers who are obviously less health conscious likely have more perio disease. Tracking this back to the statement that -perio equals bone loss equals development of the cascade of events that causes OSCC- looks like junk science with poor bias controls stated.