The present findings indicated that when subgingival bacteria were evaluated together, P. micros and C. rectus may have a role in increasing the risk for PLBW, although no single bacteria exhibited any relation with the risk of PLBW. Further studies are required to better clarify the possible relationship between periodontal diseases and PLBW.

The results of this study indicate that periodontal disease may be associated with acute myocardial infarction. To our knowledge, this is the first study that reports the importance of periodontal health in the occurrence of acute myocardial infarction in a Turkish population. We propose that prospective randomized studies are needed to determine whether periodontal disease is a risk factor in the occurrence of acute myocardial infarction.

Neither smoking nor periodontal inflammation seemed to influence GCF RANKL levels in systemically healthy patients with chronic periodontitis. Smoking and non-smoking patients with chronic periodontitis were not affected differently by the initial periodontal treatment with regard to GCF IL-17 and OPG concentrations.

The results on the Turkish study population were generally in line with earlier reports on the occurrence and interspecies relationships of certain bacteria in periodontitis. However, A. actinomycetemcomitans was not overrepresented in LAgP, and the serotype distribution resembled that reported from the East. The high frequency of non-serotypeable isolates suggests local characteristics of the species.

Total salivary MMP-8 assessed by immunofluorometric assay method and immunoblot densitometric units was higher in non-AMI than in AMI patients' saliva, but a significantly higher percentage of AMI patients' MMP-8 was activated polymorphonuclear leukocyte (PMN) type (P <0.001) regardless of periodontal diagnosis.Serum MMP-8, MMP-9, and TIMP-1 levels were significantly higher in AMI (for all markers and all comparisons,P <0.05). Characteristic for AMI was dominance of active PMN MMP-8 in saliva [corrected].