Increased prevalence of cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases in periodontitis patients: a cross-sectional study.

Background: Associations between periodontitis and cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases are most often assessed in patients with a particular cardiovascular or autoimmune disease. To prevent selection bias, this study assesses the existence of associations between periodontitis and cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases in patients attending a dental or periodontal clinic.

Methods: Data were collected from 1,276 randomly selected dental records from patients attending a dental (n = 588) or periodontal (n = 688) clinic.