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2nd. Edition

Oral Malodor and Periodontal Diseases

The relationship between periodontal diseases and oral malodor is a perplexing one. Given the insidious nature of periodontal disease progression, early detection based on oral malodor would seem an ideal tool (McCulloch and Bosy, this volume). Dental professionals encounter the putrid odor of subgingival plaque on a day-to-day basis. Earlier studies (e.g., Sulser et al., 1939; Berg and Fosdick, 1946), as well as more recent ones carried out in Israel (Kozlovsky et al., 1994a) , Japan (Miyazaki et al., this volume; Yaegaki, this volume) and the US (De Boever et al., 1994), show highly significant associations between periodontal disease and oral malodor parameters. However, the results of a recent Canadian study, involving a large population size, did not support an association between these two parameters (Bosy et al., 1994; McCulloch and Bosy, this volume). Similarly, whereas plaque index appears to correlate with oral malodor in several studies (Rosenberg et al.,1991a; Kozlovsky et al., 1994), the two are not always associated (Bosy et al., 1994).
Future research is required to unravel these apparent paradoxes.