Oral disease can cause pre-term or low birth weight babies

Oral disease can cause pre-term or low birth weight babies

Pregnant women with Periodontitis may suffer from preeclampsia

By Vikas Vaidya

Oral disease, especially Periodontitis means "inflammation around the tooth" can cause pre-term or low birth weight babies. This finding is an outcome of the research done by Department of Periodontics of VSPM Dental college in association with Department of Gynaecology and Biochemistry of NKPSIMS.
Dr Abhay Kolte, Head, Department of Periodontics under whose guidance this study was conducted said, “Periodontitis is a serious gum infection that damages the soft tissue and bone that supports the tooth. All periodontal diseases, including periodontitis, are infections which affect the Periodontium. The periodontium are the tissues around a tooth, tissues that support the tooth. With periodontitis, the alveolar bone around the teeth is slowly and progressively lost. Microorganisms, such as bacteria, stick to the surface of the tooth and multiply - an overactive immune system reacts with inflammation.”Dr Kolte pointed out, “There are 50 to 60% Microorganisms stay in the oral cavity of the body, which are out of the total organisms in the body. Some microorganisms found in gingival sulcus, a pocket between the teeth and the gums. Due to temperature change, these micro-organisms get increased and cause destruction of peridontium and get the entry into blood circulation and through it, the micro-organisms enter into heart, liver and gynaecological organs.”
For this study, Dr Kolte and his team formed three groups, one is normal pregnant woman, second is pregnant women with normal blood pressure and periodontitis and third group is of pregnant women with hypertension and periodontitis. Each group included 30 women.
It was found that 25 per cent of the women who have problems of peridontitis have developed pre-eclampsia. Such women experienced hypertension in the 4th week of pregnancy. Then there can be mortality of foetus and mortality of mother in some of the cases.
The prevention can be done by timely treatment. But the problem is that, 90% of the patients do not have regular dental check-up. They do not have exclusion of infection if found any.
Smoking, liquor, stress are some of the important factors causing preeclampsia. There are age-matched factors also. But we have taken the women having age between 20 to 30 years who have periodontitis and who are attending gynaecology department regularly. The study says that 20 per cent of such women are prone to preeclampsia. International survey says that 60% of such women can develop preeclampsia.
The awareness is not there. Many times people come to doctor when they reach in last stage. The patient with such conditions are cured but they have to undergo surgery. If the patient comes early, then clinical treatment is sufficient.
The periodontitis has connection with pre-term or low birth weight. Mainly it is connected to mother. The oral infection can be transfered from father to mother, mother to child or child to mother. If patient is healthy and still does not deliver a baby of 2.7 kg and has delivered low weight baby then the reason can be related to oral disease. The routine delivery takes place after 36 weeks of completion of pregnancy but this study revealed that, many women who are otherwise healthy but have oral disease and delivering low  birth weight or pre-term babies.
Dr Abhay Kolte, Dr Rajashri Kolte, Dr Sushma Bapatla, Dr Rageshri Mankar, Dr Srekha Rathod, from department of Periodontics, Dr Sunita Ghike from department of gynaecology and Dr Madhur Gupta from department of Biochemistry worked on this study.