Int J Public Health International Journal of Public Health Int J Public Health 1661-8564 Frontiers Media S.A. 1605156 10.3389/ijph.2022.1605156 Public Health Archive Letter to the Editor Periodontitis as a Risk of Hospitalization and Death by SARS-CoV-2 Gupta et al. Periodontitis and SARS- CoV-2 Gupta Shipra 1 Räisänen Ismo T. 2 Sorsa Timo 2 * 1 Oral Health Sciences Centre, Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education & Research, Chandigarh, India 2 University of Helsinki and Helsinki University Hospital, Helsinki, Finland

Edited by: Olaf Von Dem Knesebeck, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany

 *Correspondence: Timo Sorsa, timo.sorsa@helsinki.fi 31 08 2022 2022 67 1605156 22 06 2022 22 07 2022 Copyright © 2022 Gupta, Räisänen and Sorsa. 2022 Gupta, Räisänen and Sorsa

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 COVID-19 oral health death prevention ventilation

Dear Editors,

We concur with the observations of Mauer et al. [1] addressing the comparative analysis of risks of hospitalization, clinical outcomes and death due to SARS-CoV-2 in patients hospitalized in Lombardy. Affordable precision/personalized medicine which combines the patients clinical data with lab-on-a-chip biomarkers, imaging and point-of-care diagnostics is the way forward if we want to dispense quality care to patients. Among real time monitoring of COVID-19 related risk diseases, it is pertinent to monitor oral and periodontal health, when we take into perspective the probability of poor gum health contributing to the COVID-19 related hospitalization and other adverse outcomes [2–4].

Sufficient evidence in literature underscores the importance of oral health, with emphasis on the prevention and treatment of periodontitis, linking it with many systemic diseases, and now with COVID-19 [3–5]. The same is suggested by the sample of 78 COVID-19 positive (delta variant) patients from India among whom patients with periodontitis were significantly more likely to need hospital admission, assisted ventilation or have COVID-19 related pneumonia than the periodontally healthy patients (p < 0.05; Table 1) [3]. Further studies are warranted to address the effect of oral and periodontal health on hospitalization and death due to other COVID-19 variants.

Association between Periodontal disease status (Healthy, Gingivitis, Periodontitis) and Hospital admission, COVID-19 related pneumonia and assisted ventilation among 78 Indian COVID-19 positive patients (India, 2021).

Healthy Gingivitis Periodontitis p-value a
Home isolation 16a 12a 0b <0.001
Hospital admission (Ward + ICU) 11a 9a 30b
COVID-19 related pneumonia: Yes 3a 4a,b 14b 0.007
COVID-19 related pneumonia: No 24a 17a,b 16b
Assisted ventilation required 3a 5a 21b <0.001
Assisted ventilation not required 24a 16a 9b

Pearson Chi-Square (Exact Sig. 2-sided).

Each superscript letter denotes a subset of periodontal disease status groups whose column proportions do not differ significantly from each other measured by pairwise Z-tests (Bonferroni corrected) at the 0.05 level.

 Ethics Statement

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, India Institutional Ethics Committee (INT/IEC/2021/SPL-636). The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

 Author Contributions

SG contributed to conceptualization, data curation, analysis and writing-original draft. Analysis and writing-review and editing was done by IR and TS. SG has directly accessed and verified the data reported in the manuscript.

 Funding

This work was carried out as a part of routine COVID-19 diagnostic activity of the Regional Virus Diagnostic Laboratory under ICMR New Delhi, by the Department of Virology, PGIMER, Chandigarh.

 Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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