Effect of periodontal therapy with systemic antimicrobials on parameters of metabolic syndrome: A randomized clinical trial

AIM: To investigate the effect of basic periodontal therapy (BPT) with antimicrobials (AM) on the parameters of metabolic syndrome (MetS) (waist circumference, systolic/diastolic blood pressure [BP], HDL-cholesterol, triglycerides, glucose). METHODS: One hundred and ten periodontitis patients without known comorbidities and unaware of possible MetS were randomly assigned to BPT (n = 56) or BPT+AM (n = 54) and followed for 12 months post-therapy. Number of patients with undiagnosed MetS was also determined. RESULTS: In all patients, the periodontal condition improved; however, the BTP+AM group showed greater pocket depth reduction than the BPT group. Post-therapy, systolic BP (p < .05) and triglycerides (p < .05) reduced significantly during the follow-up period. No significant differences could be assessed between the BPT+AM and BPT group. Despite the absence of self-reported comorbidities, 27.2% (n = 30) periodontitis patients fulfilled the criteria of MetS at baseline. After therapy, this proportion changed to 14.5% at 3 months (p = .007), to 17.3% at 6 months (p = .017) and to 21.8% at 12-month follow-up (p = .383). CONCLUSION: Although a reduction in systolic BP and triglycerides and a temporarily improvement in the whole metabolic status were observed, the use of antimicrobials in conjunction with BTP does not yield any additional improvement in the parameters of MetS.