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Meta-Analysis
. 2018 Apr 17;13(4):e0195683.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0195683. eCollection 2018.

Is periodontitis a risk indicator for cancer? A meta-analysis

Stefano Corbella  1   2 , Paolo Veronesi  3   4 , Viviana Galimberti  3 , Roberto Weinstein  5 , Massimo Del Fabbro  1   2 , Luca Francetti  1   2
Affiliations
Meta-Analysis

Is periodontitis a risk indicator for cancer? A meta-analysis

Stefano Corbella et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Background: The aim of the present systematic review was to evaluate the hypothesis of an association between periodontitis and the development of cancer.

Methods: Two reviewers independently screened electronic and manual sources for pertinent articles. Primary outcome measures were the occurrence of neoplasm diagnosis in exposed and non-exposed groups, reported to evaluate association between cancer and periodontitis.

Results: Of the 490 initially retrieved papers 10 were included in the qualitative synthesis and eight in the quantitative synthesis; the eight papers covered six studies. Considering hazard ratios, a statistically significant association was found for all cancers studied (1.14; CI 95%: 1.04, 1.24), digestive tract cancer (1.34; CI 95%: 1.05, 1.72), pancreatic cancer (1.74; CI 95%: 1.21, 2.52), prostate cancer (1.25; CI 95%: 1.04, 1.51), breast cancer (1.11; CI 95%: 1.00, 1.23), corpus uteri cancer (2.20; CI 95%: 1.16, 4.18), lung cancer (1.24; CI 95%: 1.06, 1.45), hematological cancer (1.30; CI 95%: 1.11, 1.53), esophagus / oropharyngeal cancer pooled together (2.25; CI 95%: 1.30, 3.90) and Non-Hodgkin lymphoma (1.30; CI 95%: 1.11, 1.52).

Conclusions: Despite the sparse scientific evidence and considering the low statistical power of the results, this systematic review revealed a substantial lack of studies with standardized and comparable methods to speculate about the association between periodontitis and cancer; more studies are need in order to explore further the scientific evidence of such correlation.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Diagram of article selection process.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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