Associations between osteoporosis and risk of periodontitis: A pooled analysis of observational studies

Periodontitis and osteoporosis are most popular among aging population and both conditions might be linked, even though, this suggestion still until now debated.

A meta-analysis on previous investigations has been used to evaluate the correlation between periodontitis and osteoporosis to determine whether osteoporosis is a local indicator of bone loss, or whether it is depending on or related to periodontitis causes.

The literature database, including but not excluding, The Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, and Science Citation Index Expanded, was searched in this work during Feb, 2020. We conducted the investigations contain cohort studies, cross-sectional studies, as well as case-control studies with relative risk (RR) or odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Subgroup and Sensitivity analysis were also applied to identify heterogeneity sources.

23 observational studies with 12 cohorts, 7 cross-sectional and 4 case-control studies, were included, together with 2,157,037 participants. Osteoporosis patients were more exposed to periodontitis (OR, 1.96; 95% CI, 1.50-2.54). Subgroup analyses showed that the higher risk of osteoporosis in periodontitis patients exists in both cross-sectional studies (OR, 2.17; 95% CI, 1.80-2.61) and case-control studies (OR 2.63; 95% CI, 1.69-4.09), and marginally in cohort studies (OR, 1.70; 95% CI, 1.16-2.49).

Review analyses have shown that osteoporosis is closely related to the increased risk of periodontitis in the future. Dental specialists better to understand the potential association between periodontitis and osteoporosis.