Study probes oral health, cancer link
Quebec has high rate of people with no teeth
A group of researchers from the Université de Montréal has received $120,000 in research grants to study the link between oral health and the incidence of colorectal cancer.
In particular, this study, headed by dentists Igor Karp and Elham Emami, will look at whether edentulous people — those with no teeth — are more at risk for colorectal cancer.
The results could be especially important in Quebec, which has one of the highest rates in the world of people with no teeth.
A recent study showed that 40 per cent of Quebecers aged 65 or older are toothless, whereas Emami said the rate in Canada is 21.7 per cent.
“We think this could compromise their health and put them at risk for cancer,” said Emami.
“This is the first study designed to look for a real causal effect.”
Emami said the researchers chose to look at colorectal cancer because it is the third most common cancer in the country, and because there is a hypothesis that edentulous people may be more at risk for it because a lack of teeth makes it difficult to chew the fruits and vegetables needed to increase fibre and provide the kind of nutrition that might prevent colorectal cancer. And when produce consumption goes down, sugar and alcohol consumption may go up.
Studies over the last decade have increasingly shown a connection between oral health and general health, in particular that inflammation causing periodontal disease may be an indicator of atherosclerosis and other systemic conditions.
This new study is looking for a causal link, and Emami and Karp will work with an interdisciplinary team using causal inference methodology to study 500 cases of colorectal cancer and 500 controls in 15 Montreal hospitals.
Other studies, she said, have looked at oral health, not specifically edentulous people.
There seems to be a host of reasons Quebecers have such a high rate of being toothless: it could be caused by smoking, socioeconomic factors or cultural factors. Most commonly, said Emami, it’s about money — repairing teeth is costly and people sometimes choose to just extract them instead.
But she said that, culturally, French Canadians allegedly have a bit of a history of extracting even healthy teeth.
Canadian painter Jori Smith chronicled it in her memoir, Charlevoix County, 1930, when she wrote: “When a girl was about to marry, her few remaining teeth would routinely be pulled out and, as a wedding present, she would be given a set of false teeth. If ... the future bride’s teeth were still healthy, they would be removed anyway, so great was the prestige of store-bought teeth.”
Emami said a link between oral health and the incidence of cancer might send a message to policy-makers.
“They might consider dental insurance if it reduces costs in the health-care system,” she said.
For now, she said, there is only one certainty: people should take care of their teeth, brush and floss regularly and see a dentist twice a year.
Their lives may depend on it.