Abstract
Aim: To identify whether periodontal traits derived from electronic dental records are biologically informative and heritable.
Materials and methods: The study included 11,974 adult twins (aged 30-92 years) in the Swedish Twin Registry. Periodontal records from dental examinations were retrieved from a national register and used to derive continuous measures of periodontal health. A latent class approach was used to derive categorial measures of periodontal status. The correlation patterns in these traits were contrasted in monozygotic and dizygotic twin pairs using quantitative genetic models to estimate the heritability of the traits.
Results: For continuous traits, heritability estimates ranged between 41.5% and 48.3% with the highest estimates for number of missing tooth surfaces and rate of change in number of deep periodontal pockets ( 6 mm). For categorial traits the latent class approach identified 3 classes (good periodontal health, mild periodontitis signs, severe signs of periodontitis) and there was a clear difference in the hazard for subsequent tooth loss between these 3 classes. Despite this, the class allocations were only slightly more heritable than a conventional dichotomous disease definition (45.2% versus 42.6%).
Conclusions: Periodontitis is a moderately heritable disease. Quantitative periodontal traits derived from electronic records are an attractive target for future genetic association studies.
Materials and methods: The study included 11,974 adult twins (aged 30-92 years) in the Swedish Twin Registry. Periodontal records from dental examinations were retrieved from a national register and used to derive continuous measures of periodontal health. A latent class approach was used to derive categorial measures of periodontal status. The correlation patterns in these traits were contrasted in monozygotic and dizygotic twin pairs using quantitative genetic models to estimate the heritability of the traits.
Results: For continuous traits, heritability estimates ranged between 41.5% and 48.3% with the highest estimates for number of missing tooth surfaces and rate of change in number of deep periodontal pockets ( 6 mm). For categorial traits the latent class approach identified 3 classes (good periodontal health, mild periodontitis signs, severe signs of periodontitis) and there was a clear difference in the hazard for subsequent tooth loss between these 3 classes. Despite this, the class allocations were only slightly more heritable than a conventional dichotomous disease definition (45.2% versus 42.6%).
Conclusions: Periodontitis is a moderately heritable disease. Quantitative periodontal traits derived from electronic records are an attractive target for future genetic association studies.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 756-764 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Journal of Clinical Periodontology |
| Volume | 48 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| Early online date | 21 Mar 2021 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jun 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research was funded by The Swedish Research Council, grant number no 2015‐02597 (IJ), and The Patent Revenue Fund for Research in Preventive Odontology, grant number no I 2018‐001 (IJ). The Swedish Twin Registry is managed by Karolinska Institutet and receives funding through the Swedish Research Council under the grant no 2017‐00641. SH receives support from NIHR through the academic clinical fellowship scheme. None of the funding bodies had any influence on the study design, data collection, analysis, or interpretation, or the writing of the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Authors. Journal of Clinical Periodontology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Keywords
- Periodontitis
- Heritability
- latent class analysis
- genetics
- epidemiology