Screening for Type 2 diabetes mellitus using gingival crevicular blood with self monitoring blood glucose meter

Abstract

BackgroundThe number of people with Type 2 diabetes mellitus is increasing globally and there is a large group of undiagnosed diabetes mellitus patients. Since the dental practitioners are extremely likely to encounter undiagnosed diabetes mellitus patients, they could play an important role in detecting diabetes in these patients to avoid long term macrovascular and microvascular complications. AimsTo compare the gingival crevicular blood glucose and fingerstick capillary blood glucose levels, and to evaluate the ability of gingival crevicular blood to be used as non-invasive screening test for diabetes mellitus. Material and methods60 patients with chronic periodontitis were recruited for the study. 30 patients were non-diabetic healthy controls and 30 were Type 2 diabetic patients. The gingival crevicular blood and fingerstick capillary blood were evaluated for blood glucose levels by using the Onetouch Ultra blood glucose self monitoring system. Linear relationship between gingival crevicular blood glucose and fingerstick blood glucose were assessed by Pearson's correlation analysis. ResultsA high degree of intra patient correlation was observed between gingival crevicular blood glucose and fingerstick capillary blood glucose in both non-diabetic (r = 0.88) and diabetic group (r = 0.94). There was no significant difference observed between Type 2 diabetic and non-diabetic patients with regard to age, gender, probing pocket depth and clinical attachment level. ConclusionsThe results of this study indicate that gingival crevicular blood can be used for screening of Type 2 diabetes mellitus. However, further studies are needed to confirm these findings with a larger sample size.