People with undetected glucose disorders run a higher risk of both myocardial infarction and periodontitis, according to a study published in the journal Diabetes Care by researchers including cardiologists and dentists at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. The results demonstrate the need of greater collaboration between dentistry and healthcare.

      Severe periodontitis is already known to be associated with a higher risk of myocardial infarction and lowered glucose tolerance, and diabetes to be more common in people who have suffered a heart attack. The researchers behind these earlier findings have now studied whether undetected glucose disorders is linked to both these conditions: myocardial infarction and periodontitis.

      The study was based on data from a previous study called PAROKRANK. It included 805 myocardial infarction patients from 17 Swedish cardiology clinics and 805 controls, who were matched by age, sex and post code. The patients' periodontitic status was assessed with X-rays and dysglycaemic status with glucose load tests. The study shows that previously undetected glucose disorders, which include diabetes and impaired glucose tolerance, were linked to myocardial infarction. It was roughly twice as common for myocardial infarction patients to have undetected dysglycaemia as for healthy controls, confirming the research group's earlier findings. Undetected diabetes was also found to be linked to severe periodontitis. When myocardial infarction patients and controls were analysed separately, the association was clearer in the patients than in the controls, which is possibly because many of the controls were very healthy and few had severe periodontitis and undetected diabetes. "Our findings indicate that dysglycaemia is a key risk factor in both severe periodontitis and myocardial infarction and that the combination of severe periodontitis and undetected diabetes further increases the risk of myocardial infarction," says the study's lead author Anna Norhammar, cardiologist and Associate Professor at Karolinska Institutet's Department of Medicine in Solna.

      "Our study shows that undetected glucose disorders are common in two major diseases - myocardial infarction and periodontitis," says Dr Norhammar. "Many people visit the dentist regularly and maybe it's worth considering taking routine blood-sugar tests in patients with severe periodontitis to catch these patients."