Genomic Determinants and Shared Genetic Pathways of Periodontal Disease

Three specific aims are proposed to refine and validate the PD status in the Women's Health Study (WHS/WGHS) to improve the phenotypic characterization of GWAS of PD: (1) Addition of CDC-AAP (Centers for Disease Control - American Academy of Periodontology) periodontal disease instrument to the WHS annual follow-up survey. (2) Validate existing Periodontal Disease (PD) status in the WHS/WGHS (subset). Request of dental records for 180 women sampled from the WHS who had reported diagnosis of PD in the past. (3) Correlation and validation analysis of new periodontal disease information with requested dental record (most recently dated). Phone interviews and request of dental records for 180 women sampled from the WHS/WGHS who visited a dentist within recent 36 months. In addition, the investigators propose to identify genetic determinants of PD shared with CVD, DM, or osteoporosis via an integrative computational biological networks approach. Although the systemic links between PD vs. DM, CVD or osteoporosis have been established in clinical genetics as well as in experimental models, high-throughput investigations for gene-gene interplays between the associated conditions (CVD vs. PD; DM vs. PD; osteoporosis vs. PD) have not been explored yet. The investigators propose to approach this using an integrative in silico method, combining existing diverse biological information including genomic, epigenetic, expression and protein data. To our knowledge, this is the first time that hierarchical levels of integrative precision medicine will be tested for PD vs. CVD/DM/osteoporosis to generate plausible hypotheses and experimental targets.