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Updated: Nov 7, 2025
In Situ Detection of Bacteria within Paraffin-embedded Tissues Using a Digoxin-labeled DNA Probe Targeting 16S rRNA
Published on: May 21, 2015
Periodontal microorganisms and diagnosis of malignancy: A cross-sectional study
Birgitta Söder1, Håkan Källmén2, Tülay Yucel-Lindberg1
1Department of Dental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
Background:
Oral infections associate statistically with cancer.
Objective:
We hypothesized that certain periodontal microorganisms might specifically link to malignancies in general and set out to investigate this in our ongoing cohort study.
Methods:
A sample of 99 clinically examined patients from our cohort of 1676 subjects was used to statistically investigate the associations between harboring periodontal microorganisms Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans (A.a), Porphyromonas gingivalis (P.g), Prevotella intermedia (P.i), Tannerella forsythia (T.f) and Treponema denticola (T.d). We used oral infection indexes and the incidence figures of malignancies as registered in 2008-2016 in the Swedish National Cancer Register.
Results:
The pathogen A.a showed strong association with malignancy in 32 out of the 99 patients while P.g and P.i were more prevalent among patients without malignancy. In principal component analyses, A.a appeared in the strongest component while the second strongest component consisted of a combination of T.f and T.d. The third component consisted of a combination of P.g and P.i, respectively. Of basic and oral health variables, gingival index appeared to be the strongest expression of inflammation (Eigen value 4.11 and Explained Variance 68.44 percent).
Conclusions:
The results partly confirmed our hypothesis by showing that harboring certain periodontal bacteria might link to malignancy. However, the associations are statistical and no conclusions can be drawn about causality.
