Researchers have shown for the first time an association between long-standing periodontitis and the risk of developing tongue cancer, according to an article in the May issue of Archives of Otolaryngology.
Researchers at University at Buffalo The State University of New York (UB) and Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, N.Y., conducted a study that compared panoramic radiographs of 51 white men who recently had been diagnosed with tongue cancer with those of 54 white men without cancer. A periodontist who did not know the study participants’ cancer statuses measured the alveolar bone loss on each of the participants’ radiographs. All of the participants were seen in the Department of Dentistry and Maxillofacial Prosthetics at Roswell Park Cancer Institute between June 1999 and November 2005.
After adjusting for the effects of age, smoking status and number of existing teeth, the researchers found that participants with chronic periodontitis were 5.2 times more likely to have tongue cancer with every millimeter of bone loss than were participants who did not have periodontitis. They found that conditions such as decay, restorations and crowns had no significant effect on the incidence of tongue cancer.
"We expected to see an association between periodontitis and tongue cancer, given the results of earlier studies linking chronic infections and inflammation to cancer risk in other organs," said first author Dr. Mine Tezal, assistant professor, Department of Periodontics and Endodontics, UB School of Dental Medicine, and a research scientist at Roswell Park Cancer Institute. "But we didn’t expect to see such a clear association with a relatively small sample size."
The study was supported by a training grant from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research and a grant from the National Cancer Institute.
