Teeth with periodontal bone loss, cigarette smoking and plasma cotinine levels

The aim of the present study is to assess teeth with periodontal bone loss, cigarette smoking and plasma cotinine levels. We enrolled 120 untreated periodontal patients with chronic periodontitis into the study. The group comprised 48 men and 72 women, ranging in age from 21 to 75 years (mean age, 42.4 years). We divided the patients into five groups based on self-reported smoking status: (1) heavy smokers (n=35); (2) light smokers (n = 17); (3) recent former smokers (n = 8); (4) long-term former smokers (n = 17); (5) non-smokers (n = 43). We calculated packyear: (number of cigarette/day/20 x years) for all smokers. Smoking status was confirmed by measurement of plasma cotinine levels in 116 subjects. Periodontal disease was assessed on a full set of periapical radiographs. The number of teeth with bone loss was scored in four categories (no bone loss, light bone loss, moderate bone loss or serious bone loss) in all patients. The results demonstrated that plasma cotinine levels correlated significantly with the number of cigarettes smoked per day. Moreover, heavy smokers had fewer teeth with no bone loss (P < 0.001) and more teeth with moderate bone loss (P < 0.001) than non-smokers. In addition, we found a negative correlation between packyears and the number of teeth with no bone loss (P < 0.04) and a positive correlation between packyears and the number of teeth with light bone loss (P < 0.005). However, we found no correlation between plasma cotinine levels and the number of teeth with bone loss. These clinical findings suggest that cigarette smoking affects the number of teeth with or without periodontal bone loss, and this effect is related to the degree of smoking exposure.