Introduction:

Periodontal disease (PD) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) are multifactorial chronic inflammatory diseases that share similar aetiopathogenic mechanisms that lead to the destruction of both dental-alveolar tissues and synovial joints, in such way that antibodies against periodontal pathogens have been identified in the crevicular fluid and in the synovial fluid and membranes.

Objective:

To identify, recover, critically analyze and synthesize the available literature on the prevalence of periodontal microorganisms in synovial fluid of patients with RA.

Materials and methods:

A systematic search was performed in MEDLINE, ScienceDirect, SciELO and Google Scholar using the medical subject headings "Rheumatoid arthritis", "periodontal microorganisms" and "synovial fluid". Articles were included that described the presence of isolated periodontal pathogens in synovial fluid of patients diagnosed with RA. The search was closed in February 2017 and was performed using PRISMA methodology. The OSTEBA critical reading sheets were used to assess the external validity and level of evidence of each article in terms of methodological rigor.

Results:

A total of 14 publications were included that described the presence of periodontal pathogens in synovial fluid of patients with PD and RA. Seven publications detected periodontal pathogens in synovial fluid, with P. gingivalis being positive in all of them.

Conclusions:

The included studies provided evidence of the presence of periodontal microorganisms in the synovial fluid in subjects with PD and RA, associating the prevalence of P. gingivalis with increased levels of anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide (anti-CCP) antibodies, which could exacerbate inflammatory processes and produce autoimmune reactions in RA.

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