Exploring the link between gum infections and kidney disease

For patients undergoing kidney dialysis, gum disease is more than an inconvenience. It may cause not only local, oral inflammatory responses but also systemic inflammatory responses that could put patients at higher risk for complications such as heart problems, according to research by Dr. Effie Ioannidou, assistant professor of periodontology at the UConn School of Dental Medicine.

Ioannidou is part of a team of researchers led by Dr. Anna Dongari-Bagtzoglou, associate professor and head of the division of peridontology, who were the first to report on the relationship between gum disease and systemic inflammation that could affect the risk of organ rejection in kidney and heart transplant recipients.

“Researchers have identified inflammation as a potential risk for organ transplant rejection,” says Ioannidou.

Dongari-Bagtzoglou’s research team found that interleukin-6, a pro-inflammatory cytokine that is secreted in response to infections, was present in elevated amounts in transplant patients with severe chronic gum disease compared to patients with no gum disease.

“It suggests that periodontal infections may increase systemic inflammation in these patients, which may place them at a greater risk for transplant rejection,” the researchers concluded in a study published in the Journal of Periodontology in 2006.

Ioannidou noticed that the transplant recipients who had been on dialysis before the kidney transplant seemed to have more gum disease than transplant recipients who had never had dialysis.

With a grant from the General Clinical Research Center, Ioannidou began a pilot study to investigate the issue more closely. Since then, Ioannidou has received several awards to support her research on the association between chronic periodontitis and chronic kidney disease.