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Updated: Nov 12, 2025
Robust Ligature-Induced Model of Murine Periodontitis for the Evaluation of Oral Neutrophils
Published on: January 21, 2020
Using national register data to estimate the heritability of periodontitis
Simon Haworth1,2, Anders Esberg3, Ralf Kuja-Halkola4
1Medical Research Council Integrative Epidemiology Unit, Department of Population Health Sciences, Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.
Aim:
To identify whether periodontal traits derived from electronic dental records are biologically informative and heritable.
Materials And Methods:
The study included 11,974 adult twins (aged 30-92 years) in the Swedish Twin Registry. Periodontal records from dental examinations were retrieved from a national register and used to derive continuous measures of periodontal health. A latent class approach was used to derive categorial measures of periodontal status. The correlation patterns in these traits were contrasted in monozygotic and dizygotic twin pairs using quantitative genetic models to estimate the heritability of the traits.
Results:
For continuous traits, heritability estimates ranged between 41.5% and 48.3% with the highest estimates for number of missing tooth surfaces and rate of change in number of deep periodontal pockets (≥6 mm). For categorial traits, the latent class approach identified three classes (good periodontal health, mild periodontitis signs and severe signs of periodontitis) and there was a clear difference in the hazard for subsequent tooth loss between these three classes. Despite this, the class allocations were only slightly more heritable than a conventional dichotomous disease definition (45.2% vs. 42.6%).
Conclusions:
Periodontitis is a moderately heritable disease. Quantitative periodontal traits derived from electronic records are an attractive target for future genetic association studies.
