How Is Rheumatoid Arthritis Linked to Gum Disease?
A November 2020 study found more evidence of connections between rheumatoid arthritis and periodontal (gum) disease.
What Is Rheumatoid Arthritis?
Rheumatoid arthritis a chronic inflammatory and autoimmune disease, which causes the immune system to mistakenly attack healthy cells of the body. It results in painful swelling of the affected tissues. While RA primarily affects the joints of the body, it can also damage the skin, lungs, heart, blood vessels, and eyes.
How Is Rheumatoid Arthritis Connected to Gum Disease?
Although there's still more to learn about whether or not one condition could be a cause of the other, past studies have found that
people with RA are 8 times more likely to develop gum disease than those without RA. It's also been found that the type of bacteria that causes periodontal disease, porphyromonas gingivalis,
can lead to an earlier onset of RA and make it more severe.
Connections With Cardiovascular Disease
People with rheumatoid arthritis also face elevated risks for cardiovascular disease, which itself has links to periodontal disease.
The
November 2020 study in Arthritis & Rheumatology found that a pathogen related to periodontal disease, called aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans, "had the strongest associations with atherosclerosis in the patients with rheumatoid arthritis that we studied," according to Jon T. Giles, MD, MPH, of Columbia University.
While research into the connections between periodontal disease and other diseases continues, this should further reinforce the importance of