title: Dental calculus is associated with death from heart infarction.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  We studied whether the amount of dental calculus is associated with death from heart infarction in the dental infection-atherosclerosis paradigm.
  
  
  METHODS
  Participants were 1676 healthy young Swedes followed up from 1985 to 2011. At the beginning of the study all subjects underwent oral clinical examination including dental calculus registration scored with calculus index (CI). Outcome measure was cause of death classified according to WHO International Classification of Diseases. Unpaired t-test, Chi-square tests, and multiple logistic regressions were used.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Of the 1676 participants, 2.8% had died during follow-up. Women died at a mean age of 61.5 years and men at 61.7 years. The difference in the CI index score between the survivors versus deceased patients was significant by the year 2009 (P < 0.01). In multiple regression analysis of the relationship between death from heart infarction as a dependent variable and CI as independent variable with controlling for age, gender, dental visits, dental plaque, periodontal pockets, education, income, socioeconomic status, and pack-years of smoking, CI score appeared to be associated with 2.3 times the odds ratio for cardiac death.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The results confirmed our study hypothesis by showing that dental calculus indeed associated statistically with cardiac death due to infarction.
authors: Department of Dental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, P.O. Box 4064, 14104 Huddinge, Sweden.
authors: Birgitta
authors: B
authors: Söder
authors: Institute of Dentistry and Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Diseases, University of Helsinki and Helsinki University Central Hospital, PB 41, 00014 Helsinki, Finland.
authors: Jukka H
authors: JH
authors: Meurman
authors: Department of Dental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, P.O. Box 4064, 14104 Huddinge, Sweden.
authors: Per-Östen
authors: PÖ
authors: Söder
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003728:Dental Calculus / Q000473:pathology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009203:Myocardial Infarction / Q000401:mortality / Q000473:pathology*; D013548:Sweden