Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Original Research Article | OPEN ACCESS

Dental and oral health status of an Iranian population of drug abusers: A comparative study

Salmeh Kalbassi¹ , Samira Louni Aligoudarzi², Vahid Asgary³

¹Kowsar Charity Clinic; ²Mehr Medical Laboratory; ³Department of Immunology, School of Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.

For correspondence:- Salmeh Kalbassi Email: Kalbassi_salmeh@yahoo.com Tel:+9866176745

Accepted: 21 February 2018 Published: 31 March 2018

Citation: Kalbassi S, Aligoudarzi SL, Asgary V. Dental and oral health status of an Iranian population of drug abusers: A comparative study. Trop J Pharm Res 2018; 17(3):559-564 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v17i3.24

© 2018 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..

Abstract

Purpose: To evaluate the effects of hallucinogens, opioids and methamphetamines abuse on oral and dental health of an Iranian population.

Methods: In this descriptive cross sectional survey conducted in 2017, 500 drug abusers referred to addiction rehabilitation centers in Tehran Province in Tehran were selected as the study population. A questionnaire was developed to evaluate demographic data, self-reported oral health experiences during periods of substance abuse and details of substance abuse including types of substances abused, patterns and period of substance abuse.

Results: After excluding 23 addicts due to incomplete data, 500 peoples participated. Of the 500 included subjects, 390 (88 %) were male and 110 (22 %) were female. As for the qualitative variables the differences were found to be significant for route of abuse (p < 0.001), smoking (p < 0.03), pain (p < 0.001) and abnormal sounds (p < 0.001) of TMJ, sensitivity of chewing muscles (p = 0.002), smoking melanosis (p < 0.05), hypertrophic lesions (p = 0.01) and bleeding on probing (p = 0.001).

Conclusion: The findings reveal the poor dental and oral health status of drug addicts in Iran, especially methamphetamine abusers. Therefore, the results call for the design and implementation of oral health improvement programs for addicts in Iran

Keywords: Drug abuse, Dental health, Addicts, Hypertrophic lesions, Chewing muscles, Smoking melanosis, Methamphetamine