Anxiety, periodontal therapy & salivary α-amylase
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The fluctuations in anxiety levels during periodontal therapy as measured by salivary a-amylase
IRAS ID
148019
Contact name
Mark Ide
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
King's College London
Research summary
Treatment of gum disease (periodontitis) involves patient instruction in self care and operative dental interventions. Receiving dental treatment however, is a stressful procedure for around 1/4 of all adults (ADH REF) although, anecdotally, non-invasive dental visits (e.g receiving oral health education) may be perceived as less stressful than invasive ones (plaque removal).
Measurement of stress and anxiety surrounding dental procedures has traditionally been measured through self-reports, such as the Modified Dental Anxiety Scale (MDAS) and the State-Trait-Anxiety Inventory (STAI). Although reliable, it is currently unknown how well these self-reports correlate with more objective measures of stress.
Stressful procedures are known to stimulate salivary glands leading to the production of the salivary enzyme α-amylase (sAMY) (Nater et al 2005)which is much more sensitive to detecting change in stress levels than other markers such as salivary cortisol.
The study proposes to examine the relationship between stress/dental anxiety measured through self-report and stress measured objectively through α-amylase, under varying conditions of dental intervention. We are interested to know whether self-reports of stress and dental anxiety are reliably related to a physiological measure of stress and also, whether this relationship is evident under low-stress (oral health instruction) and higher-stress (plaque removal) dental visits.
This will us to develop a reliable protocol for the measurement of stress and anxiety, which will facilitate assessment of other clinical and nonclinical interventions designed to ease stress and anxiety associated with dental and possibly other treatment. It may also allow determination of relationships between levels of these markers of stress and anxiety and other biomarkers of interest to us in saliva.REC name
London - Bromley Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
14/LO/0213
Date of REC Opinion
26 Feb 2014
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion