Periodontitis and platelet count: A new potential link with cardiovascular and other systemic inflammatory diseases

As an infection-driven inflammatory disease, periodontitis could lead to a reactive increase in platelet count. This mechanism could partially mediate the well-documented association between periodontitis and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. The aim of this cross-sectional study was to test the presence of an association between periodontitis and platelet count in a representative sample of the South Korea population.

A total of 5,197 subjects representative of 34.9 million of adults were examined. Multivariate regression analyses were applied controlling for age, gender, smoking status, educational level, body mass index, alcoholism, diabetes and hypertension status, vitamin D serum levels and total cholesterol, triglycerides, HDL and LDL blood levels.

Compared to the non-severe periodontitis group, subjects with severe periodontitis (CPI = 4) displayed 13,048.93 more platelets for μl of blood (95% CI: 3,296.26-22,801.61, p = 0.009) in the fully-adjusted model. The association between severe periodontitis and platelet count has shown to be highlighted in subjects aged more than 60 years, females, non-smokers and with normal HDL blood levels. A systemic inflammatory biomarker (white blood cell count) explained the 19.25% of this association.

Within the limitations of this study, periodontitis-especially severe-is independently associated with a considerable increase in platelet count which is explained, at least in part, by an increase in the systemic inflammation.