Microbial comparison of smoker and non‐smoker adult and early‐onset periodontitis patients by polymerase chain reaction

Abstract

A number of bacterial species are involved in the aetiology of periodontitis and include Actinobacillus actinomycetemcomitans, Porphyromonas gingivalis, Prevotella intermedia, Bacteroides forsythus and Treponema denticola. Several studies have shown differences in the microflora between the various forms of periodontal disease. It is recognised that smoking is a risk factor for periodontal disease, but there are conflicting reports on whether or not smoking has an effect on the periodontal microflora. We utilised the polymerase chain reaction to determine the presence of A. actinomycetemcomitans, P. gingivalis, P. intermedia, B. forsythus and T. denticola in subgingival plaque samples in 33 adult periodontitis (AP) patients and 24 generalized early-onset periodontitis (GEOP) patients prior to treatment. When GEOP and AP patients were compared there were significant differences in the number of positive patients and sites for both A. actinomycetemcomitans and B. forsythus (p=0.0023 and 0.00001, respectively). No statistically significant differences in the prevalence of these organisms were found between smoker and non-smoker groups. These results confirm that AP and GEOP sites harbour varied microflora, but show that B. forsythus and A. actinomycetemcomitans were detected to a significantly greater extent in this group of GEOP than in the AP patients investigated. Our findings do not support the hypothesis that smokers have significant differences in the prevalence of periodontal pathogens from non-smokers.

Tobacco Smoking and Periodontal Health in a Saudi Arabian Population

“…Thus, it appears that tobacco smoking is associated with a reduced inflammatory response in terms of gingival bleeding. This finding is in agreement with those of numerous epidemiological and clinical studies reported previously with regard to cigarette smoking (Bergström & Flodérus-Myrhed 1983, Preber & Bergström 1985, Bergström 1990, Danielsen et al 1990, Lie et al 1998, Darby et al 2000, Dietrich et al 2004). …”

Smoking and periodontal tissues: a review

“…27 Microbiological studies showed that smokers had a higher prevalence of bacterial species related to periodontal disease compared to nonsmokers, including Porphyromonas gingivalis, Aggregatibacter actinomycetencomitans, Bacteroides forsythus, 28 Prevotella intermedia, Fusobacterium nucleatum. However, some authors reported no differences between smokers and nonsmokers with respect to the detection of periodontal pathogens, 29,30 both in terms of prevalence 31 and amount of bacteria 32 in the subgingival microbiota. Recent studies, using real time PCR, have demonstrated a positive relationship between degree of smoking and amount of bacteria/probing depth.…”

“…On the other hand, Bouloukaki et al 62 suggested that, there is an increase of CD8 + T-cells and a decrease of the CD4 + /CD8 + within 6 months after smoking cessation. Morozumi et al 46 state that it takes more than 8 weeks for levels of IL-1β, IL-8, TNF-α and VEGF Braz Oral Res., (São Paulo) 2012;26(Spec Iss 1): [25][26][27][28][29][30][31] to return to their normal values, and that the role (or function) of neutrophils is still not completely recovered after this period.…”

Aggressive Periodontitis: microbes and host response, who to blame?

“…Whether due to limitations in the microbiological techniques used or simply to our inability to clinically distinguish certain cases of AgP from CP, no differences in subgingival microbial detection emerged in several studies. 35,37,38,40 We recently reported results of a study on polymerase chain reaction (PCR) detection of A. actinomycetemcomitans or P. gingivalis from subgingival plaque samples of 267 periodontitis patients (84 diagnosed with AgP and 183 with CP). 30 In this patient sample, CP cases had higher detection of both bacteria compared with AgP, although the differences were not statistically significant.…”