There’s new evidence that undetected diabetes may triple the risk of severe gum disease and double the risk of a heart attack. In addition, previous research has shown that a combination of diabetes-related kidney complications, ischemic heart disease, and periodontitis creates three times the risk of mortality compared to those without periodontitis.
The risk of undiagnosed diabetes
A team of scientists from Karolinska Institute’s Department of Medicine looked at the correlation between dysglycemia (blood sugar disorders) and severe gum disease and heart attacks.
The researchers looked at data, blood samples and dental x-rays from people had experienced heart attacks or myocardial infarction, as well as a group of control participants. They went on to do the following:
- Put each participant’s blood sugar control into one of three categories: normal, reduced and newly detected diabetes
- Adjusted for sex, smoking, age, education and civil status
- Applied logistic regression to analyze the data
The results
The scientists found that those people who had experienced a heart attack were twice as likely to have undetected blood sugar disorders, including diabetes and poor glucose tolerance.
They also discovered that undetected diabetes was strongly linked to severe gum disease.
“Our findings indicate that dysglycemia is a key risk factor in both severe periodontitis and myocardial infarction,” says Dr. Anna Norhammar, a cardiologist and associate professor at the Karolinska Institute, “and that the combination of severe periodontitis and undetected diabetes further increases the risk of myocardial infarction. Many people visit the dentist regularly and maybe it’s worth considering taking routine blood sugar tests in patients with severe periodontitis, to catch these patients.”
It’s important to note, however, that this was a small study in terms of how many participants had severe periodontitis and undetected diabetes.
The results of the study were published in the journal Diabetes Care.
