Aliment Pharmacol Ther. 2023 Nov;58(10):1052-1061. doi: 10.1111/apt.17732. Epub 2023 Oct 2.

Katherine M Williams ^1 2, Prasanna K Challa ², Emily W Lopes ^1 2, Kristin E Burke ^1 2, Ashwin N Ananthakrishnan ^1 2, James M Richter ¹, Andrew T Chan ^{1 2 3 4 5}, Hamed Khalili ^1 2 3

Author information

¹Division of Gastroenterology, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

²Clinical and Translational Epidemiology Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

³Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

⁴Channing Laboratory, Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

⁵Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

Abstract

Aim: To examine the relationship between periodontal disease and tooth loss and risk of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

Methods: We conducted a prospective cohort study of 86,602 women from the Nurses' Health Study (1992-2016) and 50,349 men from the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (1986-2016) with available data on periodontal disease and tooth loss. Cases of IBD were initially reported by participants and then confirmed by medical record review. We used Cox proportional hazards modelling to estimate multivariable-adjusted hazard ratios (aHRs) and 95% CIs.

Results: Through the end of follow-up, we documented 175 cases of Crohn's disease (CD) and 209 cases of ulcerative colitis (UC). After adjustment for potential risk factors, there was no association between periodontal disease and risk of CD (pooled aHR: 0.99, 95% CI: 0.65-1.52, p = 0.970) or UC (aHR: 0.99, 95% CI: 0.68-1.45, p = 0.971). Similarly, we did not observe an association between tooth loss and risk of CD (aHR: 0.72, 95% CI: 0.43-1.21, p = 0.218) or UC (aHR: 0.89, 95% CI: 0.58-1.36, p = 0.581) in the pooled analysis. The associations were not modified by sex, age, body mass index (BMI), smoking status or NSAID use (all p_interaction > 0.87).

Conclusion: In two large prospective cohort studies, we did not observe an association between periodontal disease and tooth loss and risk of CD or UC.