A Message From Your Friends At The Southeast AETC: Our hearts go out to those in our community who were affected by the hurricanes. If you have patients that are having trouble accessing HIV services during this time, we urge you to utilize HRSA’s Find a Ryan White Provider tool to help navigate them to services nearby.

Participant Login
View Events Calendar
hiv and oral health

HIV and Oral Health – The Association Between Oral Hygiene and Heart Disease

By: Mark Schweizer, DDS MPH
Director of Development and Special Projects
Dental Director Southeastern AIDS Training and Education Center
Nova Southeastern University College of Dental Medicine
[email protected]

    The emergence of chronic disease complications in controlled HIV disease has changed the landscape of HIV clinical care. HIV infection confers an increased cardiovascular disease risk which is thought to be due to a complex interplay of mechanistic factors. While traditional cardiovascular risk factors likely play a role, recent evidence suggests that HIV-associated inflammation and immune activation are important mediators of cardiovascular risk. 1

    Brushing your teeth twice a day for at least two minutes may reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease, new research presented by the American Heart Association suggests.

    After surveying 682 people about their brushing habits, researchers determined that not following oral hygiene guidelines increased three-fold the risk of having or dying from a heart attack, heart failure or stroke.

    “Poor oral health, based on daily teeth-brushing behavior, is associated with (poorer heart health),” lead researcher Shogo Matsui, of the Institute of Biomedical and Health Sciences at Hiroshima University in Japan, said in a Nov. 7 press release from AHA.

    The release highlights a separate study – published Oct. 22 in the AHA journal Hypertension – in which researchers found that gum disease appears to increase blood pressure and may negatively interfere with medications designed to treat hypertension.

    Gum disease is one of the diseases “where the body may be in a sort of continual state of inflammation, and this seems to be a very powerful predictor of cardiovascular disease,” Ann Bolger, a cardiologist and professor of medicine emeritus at the University of California, San Francisco, said in the release.

    AHA announced the new study results Nov. 10 at its Scientific Sessions meeting in Chicago.

      References: