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Periodontal disease (PD) may increase the risk of sporadic colorectal cancer (CRC), findings from the population-based case-control COLDENT study suggest.
The rate of new CRC diagnoses among individuals in the study who had a history of PD was nearly 50% higher than in those with no such history, after adjusting for a host of medical and demographic factors, say the investigators.
This isn't the first time PD has been linked with extra-oral health outcomes, including gastrointestinal cancers. It has been shown to be associated with several major systemic diseases, such as cardiovascular, respiratory, chronic kidney, and metabolic diseases. Evidence also suggests a link between PD and Alzheimer's disease, as reported recently by Medscape Medical News.
However, prior studies that looked at the connection between PD and CRC have relied on secondary analyses of data from other studies and are limited by other methodologic shortcomings, note the researchers, led by Amal Idrissi Janati, DDS, University of Montreal, Quebec, Canada.