Adults in their 20s who don't extract their wisdom teeth face the risk of gum diseases that can cause complications during pregnancy and contribute to other health problems, researchers have said.
Wisdom teeth, also called the third molars, emerge between the ages of 17 and 25 years and are four in number, two on the upper jaw and two in lower.
“The conventional wisdom is that people who have gum disease typically don't have a problem until they are 35 or 40 years old. We found it is much more prevalent than anyone believed at a much younger age than anyone thought,” said Raymond P White Jr, lead author of the studies.
“About seven years ago, we were asked to spearhead a series of clinical trials to look at what happens if you keep your wisdom teeth and what happens if you have them taken out,” White said. “Part of the reason was that research…that the inflammation in the mouth that periodontal infections cause promoted inflammation in other parts of the body, which contributed in significant ways to coronary artery disease, stroke, kidney disease and obstetric complications.”
Under the research, dental experts studied the dental health of 254 patients who were in the 20s. All the patients had who had avoided extracting the wisdom teeth. A follow-up of several years showed that around 60 per cent of the patients were beginning to develop gum diseases around their wisdom teeth. In 25 per cent of the cases, the gum disease became more severe in the next couple of years.
“This research is very important to dentistry. It indicates that there are both general oral health and overall health implications related to the wisdom teeth that were not known before,” said Leon Assael, the editor of
Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, which published the study, carried out by the American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons.
Another study, which took into account the health of 1,020 pregnant women, again in their 20s, reported that those who chose to skip removing their wisdom teeth and were suffering from gum disease had twice the chances of undergoing premature labor.
Researchers said that the consequences of gum diseases in the pregnant women seemed to resemble those of smoking during pregnancy.
White added that since untreated gum disease planted disease-causing bacteria into the bloodstream, it was important for dentists, obstetricians and general practitioners to check wisdom teeth thoroughly during medical check-up.
"Although most people eventually will develop pathology with wisdom teeth, periodontal disease, pericoronitis or tooth decay, it is too early to recommend strongly that everyone has their wisdom teeth removed. It is a good idea to have your third molars evaluated before age 25. But since a quarter of people will never have problems with them, a lot depends on how risk-averse one is as to whether their third molars with no detected pathology should be extracted as a precaution,” White said.
