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. 2020 Nov:144:109969.
doi: 10.1016/j.mehy.2020.109969. Epub 2020 Jun 19.

Is periodontal disease a risk factor for severe COVID-19 illness?

Viviana Pitones-Rubio  1 , E G Chávez-Cortez  1 , Angélica Hurtado-Camarena  1 , Anna González-Rascón  1 , Nicolás Serafín-Higuera  2
Affiliations

Is periodontal disease a risk factor for severe COVID-19 illness?

Viviana Pitones-Rubio et al. Med Hypotheses. 2020 Nov.

Abstract

Periodontal disease (PD) comprises a group of diseases involving inflammatory aspects of the host and dysbiotic events that affect periodontal tissues and could have systemic implications. Diverse factors and comorbidities have been closely associated with PD such as diabetes, obesity, aging, hypertension, and so on; although, underlying mechanisms or causal associations have not been established completely. Interestingly, these same factors have been widely associated with progression or severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), an illness caused by coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. Since inflammatory and dysbiotic factors as well as comorbidities affect systemic health, it is possible that periodontal status indicates the risk of complication of COVID-19. However, assessment of oral health history including periodontal status in COVID-19 patients has not been reported. Knowing PD is associated with severe COVID-19 could help identify risk groups and establish pertinent recommendations.

Keywords: COVID-19; Comorbidities; Periodontal disease; Risk factors.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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