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J Clin Periodontol 2006; 33: 115–120

Smoking has been identified as a persistent confounder in studies linking periodontitis with systemic effects, even when marked allowances have been made for its effect. This is a report on people who have never smoked, and who participated in the largest study yet to examine the relationship of obstetric outcome to periodontal diseases. A total of 1793 non-smoking participants was identified.

Subjects were periodontally examined at 10-15 weeks' gestation. Eventually, 130 gave birth before 37 weeks, and 17 experienced late miscarriage. Mean previous probing depth for subjects with preterm birth was 2.02, as for those without this experience; for those experiencing late miscarriage, it was 2.15 (P = 0.054). Logistic regression identified antibiotics in first trimester (OR=6.0), previous history of miscarriage (5.0) and increased probing depth at mesial sites (3.8) as related to late miscarriage, but not preterm birth or low birth weight. The authors consider the periodontal-miscarriage relationship to be weak.