Body's Immune System Response To Dental Plaque Varies By Gender And Race

“We are talking about healthy people who simply neglect oral hygiene and if they were male and black, we found a response from their white blood cells, or neutrophils, that might be a cause for concern,” says Michael Kowolik, BDS, PhD, professor of periodontics and associate dean for graduate education at the IU School of Dentistry on the campus of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.

A research team led by Kowolik, studied 128 black and white men and women and found that dental plaque accumulation did not result in a change in total white blood count, a known risk factor for adverse cardiac events.

However, in black males the researchers noted a significant increase in the activity of neutrophils.

Unlike most other studies that attempt to understand the link between oral inflammatory disease and heart disease risk, participants in this study did not have periodontal disease. They were healthy individuals who by the study design were asked to neglect oral hygiene.

“If you get a bacterial infection anywhere in the body, billions of neutrophils come flooding out of your bone marrow to defend against the intruder. Our observation that with poor dental hygiene white blood cell activity increased in black men but not black women or whites of either sex suggests both gender and racial differences in the inflammatory response to dental plaque. This finding could help us identify individuals at greater risk for infections anywhere in the body including those affecting the heart,” Kowolik says.