relationship between triglyceride and cholesterol levels and periodontal status

background and aim: recently some evidence has been presented that periodontal disease is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. the hypothesis of this study is that periodontitis may be associated with elevated blood lipid levels, a known risk factor for atherosclerotic disease. methods & materials: the levels of plasma lipids was measured in 40 subjects with chronic periodontitis (cp) and compared with those obtained in 40 controls. periodontal variables included: plaque index (pli), probing pocket depth (ppd), clinical attachment level (cal) and bleeding on probing (bop). laboratory tests included: total cholestrol, triglyceride, ldl and hdl. statistical tests used were kolmogorov –smirnov, kruskal wallis, spearman’s rank correlation, exact fisher and independent samples student t-test. the level of statistical significance was established at p<0.05. results: there were no statistically significant differences between blood lipid levels in the two groups but in the control group, there were positive correlations between bop and cholestrol (p=0.01). in the cp group there were positive correlations between ppd and cholestrol (p=0.037), ppd and ldl (p=0.034) and ppd and the number of missing teeth (p=0.019).there were also positive correlations between bop and cholestrol (p=0.005) and bop and ldl (p=0.006 ) in the cp group. conclusion: the results of the present study suggest that in patients with periodontitis, as the periodontal parameters (bop and ppd) increase, the blood levels of cholestrol and ldl increase too, but it is not clear yet whether the observed changes in lipid metabolism are the cause or the consequence of periodontitis.j dent sch 2007 24(4): 9