A Preliminary Prevalence Study of Gingival Hyperplasia in Patients Associated with Nifedipine Therapy

Abstract

We made a preliminary prevalence study of characteristic gingival hyperplasia induced by nifedipine, a Ca²⁺ antagonist, which is used for hypertension or angina pectoris.
93 subjects were out- or in- patients with hypertension or cardiopathy in one private hospital in Sendai city.
Persons who received other gingival hyperplasia inducing drugs, or persons who had received nifedipine in the past and were not receiving it now were excluded. The 46 remaining persons were enrolled as the nifedipine therapy group, and 16 persons had no history of nifedipine therapy were enrolled as the control group.
In the nifedipine therapy group, 5 persons (10.9%) were designated as characteristic gingival hyperplasia+, and 10 persons (21.7%) were designated as ±. In the control group, no one was designated as characteristic gingival hyperplasia + and one person (6.3%) was designated as ±. In statistical analysis, the nifedipine therapy group had more incidence of characteristic gingival hyperplasia than the control group (p=0.034) (Table 2). Comparing the characteristic gingival hyperplasia+group and the-group in the nifedipine therapy group, the mean PI value was higher in the + group (p<0.05). But in CI and DI, no statistical difference was found between the two groups (Table 4).
The average medication period of the characteristic gingival hyperplasia + group was 11.8 months (range 4-29), but there was no difference when compared with the characteristic gingival hyperplasia -group. The accumulated dose in the gingival hyperplasia - group was higher than in the gingival hyperplasia + group (Table 5).