Dental News - Study investigates oral health of remote Asian tribes

Dental Tribune International

Tue. 12. May 2015

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GOTHENBURG, Sweden: Owing to poor oral hygiene conditions and a lack of professional dental care, developing countries often have a higher prevalence of periodontitis and tooth loss compared with industrialised countries. However, researchers from the University of Gothenburg have found that both conditions are not substantially more common in isolated tribe populations in north-western Thailand, who have no access to dental care at all, than in other parts of the country.

The study aimed to describe clinically and microbiologically the periodontal conditions of Karen hill tribes, a specific non-Thai population, living in the mountainous region of north-western Thailand. The remote and isolated village populations have no access to dental care and, according to the scientists, low interest in oral hygiene.

In order to investigate whether the tribes suffer more periodontal breakdown and tooth loss than other populations in Thailand with access to dental care, mobile dental teams carried out clinical examinations on 86 Karen individuals, aged 30 to 60 years old. On two separate occasions, clinical parameters, including the number of remaining teeth, the plaque index, bleeding on probing, probing pocket depth and the clinical attachment level, were examined in full-mouth periodontal screenings. In addition, subgingival bacterial samples of the participants were taken and further analyses carried out at the Oral Microbiological Diagnostic Laboratory in Gothenburg.

Both the bacterial analyses and the clinical examination found the oral condition of the tribe population to be healthier than might be assumed. The mean number of teeth ranged between 27.16 among 30- to 39-year-olds and 25.5 in 50- to 60-year-old participants. While there was an equal distribution of males and females in the study, significantly more men (77.92 per cent) experienced severe periodontitis than did women (22.86 per cent).

Aside from sex, the extent of the disease was associated with age above 40 years and smoking. Among the 86 individuals, smoking was four times more frequent among men than among women. Betel nut chewing, however, a common Asian habit, was slightly more frequent among women than men: 57.15 per cent compared with 42.86 per cent. Thus, the habit could not be associated with the extent of periodontitis.

Despite the absence of any dental or medical care, generalised severe periodontitis was present only in a limited number of adults in this study and did not differ much from existing data from rural areas of southern Thailand. As for the factor of age, the occurrence of periodontitis has proven to increase by age in most populations in various studies, including in both industrialised and developing countries. Furthermore, the researchers concluded that the link between men and periodontitis is possibly due to an association between males and smoking, considering that four out of five smokers were men in the present group.

The study, titled “Periodontal disease in a remote Asian population: Association between clinical and microbiological parameters”, was published online on 28 April in the Journal of Investigative and Clinical Dentistry ahead of print.

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