Epidemiological Factors of Periodontal Disease Among South Indian Adults

INTRODUCTION: Oral conditions exist worldwide, and are related with astounding morbidity. Indian adults’ incidence of mild and moderate periodontal conditions was nearly 25%, while about 19% of adults experience severe periodontitis. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to analyse epidemiological factors of periodontal disease among a south Indian population based on the role of sociodemographic factors, habitual factors and set of oral health knowledge, attitude, and behaviour measures. METHODS: A sample of 288 participants above 18 years of age residing in Tamil Nadu, India took part in this cross-sectional study. Based on WHO criteria, periodontal disease was measured in our study. Age, ethnicity, smoking, education, and oral health behavior were found to be the covariates. Ordinal logistic regression analysis using R version 3.6.1 was utilized to study the various factors that influence periodontal disease among south Indian adults. RESULTS: Various demographic factors such as age between 25 and 34 years (AOR = 2.25; 95% CI 1.14–4.55), 35–44 years (AOR = 1.80; 95% CI 0.89–3.64), ≥ 45 years old (AOR = 2.89; 95% CI 1.41–6.01), ethnicity (AOR = 2.71; 95% CI 1.25–5.81), smoking (AOR = 0.38; 95% CI 0.16–0.65), primary level education (AOR = 0.07; 95% CI 0.01–0.50) high school level education (AOR = 0.06; 95% CI 0.01–0.27), university level education (AOR = 0.08; 95% CI 0.01–0.36) and an individual’s oral health behavior (AOR = 0.59; 95% CI 0.32–1.08) were found to be related with periodontal disease among the south Indian population. The maximum log likelihood residual deviance value was 645.94 in the final model. CONCLUSION: Based on our epidemiological findings, sociodemographic, habitual factors and oral health behavior play a vital role in an individual’s periodontal status among south Indian adults. An epidemiological model derived from the factors from our study will help to bring better understanding of the disease and to implement various preventive strategies to eliminate the causative factors.