The fewer teeth a person has, the sooner they are likely to die, researchers at the University Hospital of Uppsala report.
The researchers followed 7,674 patients for a median of 12 years and found that those with fewer teeth were most likely to die, particularly when the death was from cardiovascular disease or coronary heart disease.
The study will be published in the Journal of Periodontology and is available online as the dissertation of Anders Holmlund.
The correlation between death and teeth correlated very highly (p < 0.0001), Holmlund wrote. In fact, those with fewer than 10 teeth were seven times more likely to die during the study than those with more than 25 teeth.
The researchers found correlations among various markers of periodontal disease, such as bleeding on probing and the number of deepened pockets, and hypertension and myocardial infarction, although these were inconsistent.
They also turned up a relationship between antibodies for the periodontal bacterium Porphyromonas gingivalis and myocardial infarction, suggesting a role for this type of infection in both periodontal disease and cardiovascular disease.
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