An observational study featured in the online journal BMJ Open reveals that persistent dental plaque can potentially raise the risk of dying early from cancer.   Researchers decided to establish whether dental plaque may influence the risk of early death from cancer due to infection and inflammation, as both factors are believed to play a role in up to one in five different types of cancer.

At the end of the study in 2009, the team registered 58 deaths of which about a third (35.6%) were women and 35 of these deaths were due to cancer. The average age of the deceased was 61 year for women and 60 years for the men. The women’s life expectancy would have been about 13 years longer, whilst that of the men would have been 8.5 years longer, which places them into the ‘premature deaths’ category. 
Whilst the women predominantly died from breast cancer, the men’s deaths were caused by a various different cancers.

The researchers observed that the deceased had a higher dental plaque index, compared with the survivors. Their values ranged from 0.84 to 0.91, which suggests the gums of their teeth were covered with plaque, whilst that of the survivors was consistently lower, i.e. 0.66 to 0.67, suggesting a partial cover with dental plaque. After accounting for all risk factors the team discovered that the risk of dying from cancer was almost two-fold with age, and that male gender had a 90% increased risk.