Methamphetamine users have increased dental disease: a propensity score analysis

Key Points

• A selection of abstracts of clinically relevant papers from other journals.

• The abstracts on this page have been chosen and edited by John R. Radford.

Abstract

Although 'not consistently as extreme as depicted in earlier reports,' those who use methamphetamine show more extensive caries.

Main

Shetty V, Harrell L et al. J Dent Res 2016; 95: 814–821

Some commentators have questioned whether or not methamphetamine is associated with a distinct pattern of dental caries; such observations have been based on studies with a small sample size, lacking methodological rigor especially issues with reporting bias. The key findings from this study were that methamphetamine users were '4 times more likely to have teeth affected by dental caries and roughly twice as likely to have untreated dental caries' compared with controls. In addition, the pattern of caries in those that use methamphetamine was distinct with the highest occurrence in maxillary central incisors, and then the maxillary premolar and molar teeth. Those who injected methamphetamine had higher caries rates than those who smoked or snorted the drug. These investigators used a covariate-balancing propensity score strategy to examine the effect of methamphetamine on dental caries in users from Los Angeles County (n = 571) compared with controls (n = 2,755).