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. 2018;22(3):407-419.
doi: 10.1007/s12603-017-0960-x.

Association between Salivary Hypofunction and Food Consumption in the Elderlies. A Systematic Literature Review

C Muñoz-González  1 , M Vandenberghe-Descamps, G Feron, F Canon, H Labouré, C Sulmont-Rossé
Affiliations

Association between Salivary Hypofunction and Food Consumption in the Elderlies. A Systematic Literature Review

C Muñoz-González et al. J Nutr Health Aging. 2018.

Abstract

Objectives: This systematic literature review aims to summarize the existing scientific evidence about the association between a reduced salivary function and food consumption in elderly people.

Methods: A validated search strategy in two databases (PubMed and ISI Web of Knowledge) was carried out and retrieved papers together with their reference lists were screened by two independent reviewers. The quality of the included studies was critically appraised via the Quality Assessment Criteria for Evaluating Primary Research Papers.

Results: From the originally identified studies (n=391), only 15 articles (all cross-sectional studies) met the pre-fixed inclusion/exclusion criteria. The methodological quality of the included studies was in general good, although only 3 from 15 obtained the maximum score. The control of confounding factors was the quality variable more poorly rated in the selected studies. Salivary hypofunction was associated with a decrease of the objective chewing and swallowing abilities and taste perception. Moreover, most of the selected studies showed a relationship between salivary hypofunction and food consumption (in terms of appetite loss, unbalanced dietary intake and malnutrition), although no causality could be established.

Conclusions: This study highlights the fact that salivary hypofunction definition and measurements are different across the studies. Therefore, future research efforts should focus on establishing a gold standard to define and identify salivary hypofunction throughout life and on performing longitudinal studies controlling for confounding factors to establish causality.

Keywords: Hyposalivation; appetite; dietary intake; elderly; nutritional status.

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Conflict of interest statement

No conflicts of interest to report on all authors

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Overview of the research strategy
Figure 2
Figure 2
Schema resuming the main correlations found in this SLR between salivary hypofunction and the selected outcomes. The ratio (x/n) indicates the number of articles that highlighted a positive association between salivary hypofunction and the specific outcome (x) from the total number of articles that treated the topic (n)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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