Gingivitis and CAD

David and Michelle left a question to this post.

My wife works in the dental field, and a few years back we heard of a linkage between gingivitis and CAD, which I thought was quite interesting but didn't receive a lot of airtime. This dovetails nicely with the inflammatory theory of CAD. Do you know of any recent studies that look at the gingivitis-CAD link from more of a cardiologists' perspective?

As far as I know there are no recent trials. If I remember correctly one of the earliest workers in the field of gingivitis-CAD was an Argentinian dentist (his name escapes me now). This theory, however, has by and large fallen out of favour. The inflammation theory is in fashion and looks very attractive.

We must remember that gingivitis may stimulate inflammation. Interestingly enough the people who specialise in alternative medicine eg chelationist, pay a great deal attention to gum infections and also the mercury that we use in dental fillings. According to them, these are toxic, and so you need to be detoxified, with chelation therapy.