Tongue microbiome of smokeless tobacco users

BMC Microbiology

Table 1 Characteristics of the study groups described as mean ± SD or number (%) as appropriate

Variable	Shammah Users (n = 29)	Shammah non-users (n = 23)	P value^a
Age	27.34 ± 6.9	27.7 ± 7.19	0.859
Education
Illiterate	5 (17.2)	2 (8.7)	0.443
Primary	5 (17.2)	5 (21.7)
Secondary	16 (51.7)	9 (39.1)
University	4 (13.8)	7 (30.4)
Type of Shammah
White	12 (41.4)	NA	NA
Black	17 (58.6)		NA
Duration of shammah use (years)	8.66 ± 7.11	NA	NA
Frequency of shammah use per day	11.86 ± 4.43	NA	NA
Qat Chewing
Yes	7 (24.1)	2 (8.7)	0.144
No	22 (75.9)	21 (91.3)	0.144
Frequency of qat chewing per week^b	2.11 ± 0.81	1.5 ± 0.71	0.324
Smoking
Yes	7 (24.1)	3 (13)	0.482
No	22 (75.9)	20 (87)	0.482
Cigarette/Day^c	7.43 ± 3.46	5.33 ± 4.04	4.25
DMFT	5.41 ± 4.38	5.78 ± 4.11	0.758
Decay	4.45 ± 3.67	3.57 ± 2.9	0.350
Missing	0.52 ± 0.91	0.61 ± 0.89	0.718
Filling	0.76 ± 1.46	1.61 ± 2.62	0.173

^aChi-squared or Student’s t-test as appropriate. ^b: n = 19 and 2 for Shammah Users and Shammah Non-Users, respectively. ^c: n = 7 and 3 for Shammah Users and Shammah Non-Users, respectively

ISSN: 1471-2180