Maternal periodontal disease may be associated with increased risk of preterm low birthweight
Summary
Subjects
The women were randomly chosen from a population who gave birth at the Royal London Hospital between January 1997 and August 1998. They lived mainly in the East London and City Health Authority situated in the North Thames region. A total of 236 cases and 507 controls (sample size: 743) were enrolled.
Exposure
The exposure was periodontal disease, defined as mean pocket depth in millimeters. Pocket depth was measured as the maximum pocket depth for each tooth and then averaged across the teeth for each person.
Main Outcome Measure
Giving birth to a preterm low-birthweight infant (weighing under 2500 g and born before 37 weeks' gestation) compared with the reference group of mothers who gave birth to a normal infant (weighing more than 2500 g and born after 38 weeks' gestation).
Main Results
A unit increase in pocket depth showed a negative association with preterm low-birthweight delivery, controlling for maternal age, ethnic group, maternal education, smoking, alcohol consumption, number of infections during pregnancy, and hypertension during pregnancy (odds ratio [OR] = 0.79; 95% CI 0.64 to 0.99). After 70 induced births were excluded from the analysis, the relationship was similar but not significant (OR = 0.87; 95% CI 0.69 to 1.11; Table 3).
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Harvard School of Dental Medicine Boston, Mass, USA
ABSTRACT