Poor Oral Hygiene Associates with Prostate Cancer A 28 Year Follow Up Study from Sweden

Abstract

Birgitta Soder, Jukka H Meurman, Leif C Andersson and Per-Osten Soder

The objective of this study was to investigate whether there is an association between the amount of dental plaques and incidence of prostate cancer in patients followed up for 28 years. We hypothesized that dental plaque reflects infection and affects carcinogenesis via the inflammation pathway. This was a database incidence study on 838 30-40-year-old men of 3273 randomly selected subjects from Stockholm area, clinically examined in 1985. Prostate cancer incidence was registered during 28 years from the Center of Epidemiology, Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare, Sweden, according to WHO International Classification of Diseases. We compared baseline clinical data with prostate cancer diagnoses. Twentyeight men of the 838 were diagnosed with prostate cancer up to year 2013. Descriptive statistics and logistic regression were used for analyses. Results showed that dental plaque index (PLI), as indicator of poor oral hygiene and potential source of infection, was higher in men with than without prostate cancer (1.04±0.63 vs 0.78±0.52; p<0.01). This also reflected in higher number of missing molars (p<0.02) which appeared as principal independent predictor with odds ratio 2.4 (95% confidence interval 1.11 – 5.12) in multiple logistic regression analyses with prostate cancer as dependent variable and several independent variables. No significant differences were seen between the groups regarding age, smoking, education, gingival index, calculus index, periodontal pockets, and social status. To our knowledge these data are the first in showing the potential risk of poor oral hygiene for prostate cancer. Result may be explained by low-grade systemic inflammation of oral origin that affects carcinogenesis.

PDF