Periodontal disease and Preeclampsia. Literature review

Abstract

Summary: Introduction: Preeclampsia is acomplication of pregnancy that can threaten both the life of the mother as the baby. There aredifferent etiological factors for the development of preeclampsia, including chronic infections.Periodontal disease as a chronic infection has recently been associated with the onset ofpreeclampsia. Objective: To review the literature with the purpose of determine the possibleassociation between periodontal disease (PD) and Preeclampsia. Methods and Materials: Databasesearch of scientific publications in order to review studies reported from 1996 to 2007 to assessthe possible association between PD and Preeclampsia. Results: There were evaluated designs andresults of 11 scientific articles. Conclusions: This review concluded that there are very fewstudies to evaluate the presence of PD and the incidence of preeclampsia. The evaluated studies showconflicting results which may be due to the different designs of the studies, lack of unificationamong inclusion criteria between them, lack of standardization in diagnostics criteria for PD, andthe sample size is very different depending on the type of study. More intervention studies areneeded to demonstrate that controlling or eliminating PD, the previously described complications ofpregnancy are minimized, in order to affirm or refute these possible associations. Key words:Periodontal disease. Preeclampsia. Preterm birth. Risk factors.