A new paper exploring the plant qat and its effects on oral health is to be published in the next issue of the British Dental Journal. The paper, Qat and its health effects by Dr Yasin El-Wajeh and Professor Martin Thornhill, explores the Southern Arabian and Eastern African socio-cultural habit of qat chewing.

The practice consists of placing the green leaves of the qat plant into the mucobuccal fold and chewing it for several hours, with subsequent release of psychoactive agents. Qat chewing is often accompanied by smoking tobacco, and it is reported to be associated with periodontitis, leukoplakia and oral cancer.

Dr Yasin El-Wajeh became interested in the subject because he grew up in a Yemeni community where qat was chewed on a regular basis. He found that major cities such as Sheffield, Liverpool, Cardiff and Birmingham had large ethnic minorities stemming from Yemen and the Horn of Africa (Somalia, Ethiopia and Djibouti) and where qat was still chewed on a frequent basis.

He said, 'On many occasions I hear chewers comment on the benefits and effects of qat but having looked at the literature I found very little in terms of an educational paper for UK healthcare professionals and more specifically dentists. Most, if not all papers of substance on qat have been conducted outside the UK, but gathering information about this subject was made easy through having first-hand knowledge about the plant, and having close contact with “qat circles” where friends chew qat on a weekly basis.'

Dr El-Wajeh explained that the fact that qat is a socio-cultural habit was not an obstacle for information gathering and there had been multi-centred surveys and questionnaires conducted in these cities looking at qat usage. 'There's still more research to be done on several fronts regarding qat, as mentioned in the paper,' Dr El-Wajeh said. 'I would like to conduct a more scientific, lab-based study on the effects of qat on the oral mucosa sometime in the future, as my main concern is to determine whether qat should be considered as a cause of precancerous lesions.'