Associations between Periodontal Microbiota and Death Rates

Chung-Jung Chiu,Min-Lee Chang,Allen Taylor

doi:10.1038/srep35428

Abstract

It is conceived that specific combinations of periodontal bacteria are associated with risk for the various forms of periodontitis. We hypothesized that such specificity is also related to human cause-specific death rates. We tested this hypothesis in a representative sample of the US population followed for a mean duration of 11 years and found that two specific patterns of 21 serum antibodies against periodontal bacteria were significantly associated with increased all-cause and/or diabetes-related mortalities. These data suggested that specific combinations of periodontal bacteria, even without inducing clinically significant periodontitis, may have a significant impact on human cause-specific death rates. Our findings implied that increased disease and mortality risk could be transmittable via the transfer of oral microbiota, and that developing personalized strategies and maintaining healthy oral microbiota beyond protection against periodontitis would be important to manage the risk.

Highlights

It is conceived that specific combinations of periodontal bacteria are associated with risk for the various forms of periodontitis
In our diabetes-related mortality analysis (Fig. 4), we found that higher scores in either Factor 1 or Factor 2 were significantly associated with high rates of death due to diabetes-related causes; per percentile increased in the scores was related to a 1.1% increase in diabetes-related death
We found that two baseline serum IgG patterns, Factor 1 and Factor 2, were significantly associated with higher all-cause and/or diabetes-related mortality rates among people without history of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases (CVD), and cancers

Summary

Introduction

It is conceived that specific combinations of periodontal bacteria are associated with risk for the various forms of periodontitis. We hypothesized that such specificity is related to human cause-specific death rates We tested this hypothesis in a representative sample of the US population followed for a mean duration of 11 years and found that two specific patterns of 21 serum antibodies against periodontal bacteria were significantly associated with increased all-cause and/or diabetes-related mortalities. These data suggested that specific combinations of periodontal bacteria, even without inducing clinically significant periodontitis, may have a significant impact on human cause-specific death rates. We related 21 serum immunoglobulins G (IgGs) against periodontal bacteria to the rates of all-cause, diabetes-related, and hypertension-related mortalities in a death cohort from a representative sample of the US population, the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III)

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