The effect of smoking on individuals with minimal periodontal destruction.

Recent studies have demonstrated that smoking is associated with periodontal destruction. The majority of these studies have focused on periodontal disease groups with moderate or severe periodontal destruction. Additionally, there have been few reports investigating the relationship between smoking and gingival recession. The goal of this report was to investigate the effect of smoking on periodontal destruction and recession in subjects with minimal or no interproximal attachment loss. This is a cross-sectional study of 142 non-smoking subjects and 51 smoking subjects. Subjects could have no more than one tooth with a site of interproximal attachment loss > or =2 mm. Subjects could, however, have attachment loss associated with recession. For three different methods of summarizing attachment loss measurements at a subject level, including average attachment loss, percentage of teeth with one site of 2 mm of attachment loss, and the percentage of teeth with one site of 5 mm of attachment loss, smoking subjects had approximately twice as much attachment loss than their non-smoking counterparts. Smoking subjects also had significantly greater recession (P < 0.05) [0.056+/-0.017 mm] than non-smoking subjects (0.025+/-0.005 mm). Recession sites occurred primarily on the facial surface of maxillary molars and bicuspids and mandibular central incisors and bicuspids. The results suggest a strong association between smoking and both attachment loss and recession in subjects who have minimal or no periodontal disease.

Serum antibodies to periodontal bacteria.

The purpose of this study was to determine how serum antibodies reactive with periodontitis-associated bacteria with relates to the diagnosis of periodontitis subjects. Study groups included localized juvenile periodontitis (LJP) subjects, severe periodontitis (SP) subjects, chronic adult periodontitis (AP) subjects, and age matched controls. Twenty-two bacterial strains, representing 18 different species most commonly found in early onset periodontitis were evaluated using serum from LJP, SP, and age matched controls. Serum IgG reactive with these organisms was determined using a radioimmunoassay (RIA). Serum antibody reactive with 13 bacterial strains differed significantly (P less than 0.01) between the three clinical groups. Discriminate analysis revealed that antibodies reactive with 5 bacterial strains of the 13 were able to identify the clinical group to which subjects belonged 79% of the time with control subjects being correctly identified 100% of the time, LJP subjects 78% of the time, and SP subjects 60% of the time. These strains included two strains of Actinobacillus actinomycetemcomitans (Y4 and N27), Fusobacterium nucleatum (E1D1), Eubacterium brachy, and Bacteroides gingivalis. The low classification rate of SP subjects suggested heterogeneity. The SP group could be divided into three subgroups using the serological data. One subgroup, with "super" severe attachment loss, generally lacked antibody reactive with these five organisms, another subgroup was serologically similar to LJP subjects, while the third subgroup had antibodies to additional organisms. This suggests that some SP subjects may represent a more advanced form of LJP. Comparison of antibody reactivity of AP subjects with age matched controls to 23 bacterial types revealed that mean serum antibody reactivity to only Bacteroides gingivalis was higher in AP subjects.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)