Association between chronic periodontitis and herpes viruses: A review of the literature

Abstract

Objective: This research aims to analyze the available spe-cialized literature concerning the association between Herpesviruses [Cytomegalovirus (CMV), Epstein Barr virus (EBV), Herpes Simplex virus (HSV)] and chronic periodontitis to clarify the possible role of these microorganisms in the progression and severity of the disease. Materials and Methods: A search for scientific articles was carried out in March 2019 in the main metasearch engines: PubMed /MEDLINE, SciELO, EBSCO, and the Trip search engine, to select articles according to the exclusion and inclusion criteria. The analysis of the articles was carried out through a data matrix expressed in frequency tables using descriptive statistics with measures of central tendency, dispersion, and correlation. Results: The results of this study show that the presence of CMV, EBV, and HSV in patients with chronic periodontitis is related to an increase in clinical parameters such as probing pocket depth (PD), clinical insertion loss (CIL) and bleeding on probing (BOP), in 96%, 60% and 40% of the studies, respectively, for HCMV; 96.55% (PD), 51.72% (CIL), and 48.28% (BOP) for EBV, and 80% (PD), 90% (CIL), and 60% (BOP) for HSV. The average prevalence of EBV, HCMV, and HSV was 46.3%, 35.4%, and 40.1%, respectively. Conclusions: EBV, CMV, and HSV could be associated with the progression and severity of periodontal disease as they are related to a greater probing depth, greater clinical insertion loss, and greater bleeding on probing. EBV presented a higher prevalence in the reviewed literature. More clinical studies are needed to verify a direct relationship between EBV, HSV, CMV, and periodontal disease, to confirm the trends observed in this work