Saturday Spet 12, 2015 (foodconsumer.org) -- Periodontitis has been linked to elevated risk of heart disease. Some doctors consider periodontitis as a risk factor for heart disease. A new study suggests that it is not the dental disease, but a pathogen associated with the dental disease that can actually increase risk of heart disease.
The study published in Infection and Immunity showed that the periodontal pathogen known as Porphyromonas gingivalis is able to alter gene expression to boost inflammation and atherosclerosis in aortic smooth muscle cells.
Early studies have already identified the pathogen in coronary artery plaques of heart attack patients. And also evidence shows that this pathogen causes and accelerates the formation of coronary and aortic atherosclerosis in at least two animal models.
So this pathogen is a real risk factor for heart disease.
The current study led by Torbjörn Bengtsson at Örebro University in Örebro, Sweden and colleagues, simply demonstrated how this pathogen can do to increase the risk of heart disease.
For the study, researchers incubated P. gingivalis in a aortic smooth muscle cell culture and among other things they found gingipains, virulence factors produced by the pathogen, boosted expression of angiopoietin 2, a proinflammatory factor while suppressing expression of the anti-inflammatory angiopoietin 1. These two biochemical processes together increased inflammation, which is known to be strongly implicated in atherosclerosis and heart disease. (David Liu)
