Association between oral health and general health indicators in older adults

Abstract

Oral health (OH) and general health (GH) indicators are representations of the health status of the body. The OH indicators provide information about the oral health status while the GH indicators are used to assess the functional, cognitive, and mental conditions. OH is reported to be associated with GH. However, some specific associations, especially longitudinal relationships between OH and GH indicators, have not been fully explored. We examined the prediction ability from OH to GH and vice versa using a Belgian registry. We collected information from 8359 elderly participants, who were older than 65, lived at home, and received home care. The demographic and clinical information including three binary OH indicators and four ordinal GH indicators were collected. The participants were recorded at baseline and every six months afterwards. We opted for a generalization of a vector autoregressive model to ordinal responses. This model allows to estimate autocorrelations and cross-lagged correlations, addressing the prediction of GH from OH in a cross-sectional and longitudinal manner. We showed that individuals who had poorer OH had a higher risk of suffering from poor GH status. The percentages of correct or close prediction for GH indicators from OH indicators are high, being around 80% for all GH indicators. Additionally, having a poor OH (resp. GH) status was additionally predictive of a poor GH (resp. OH) status at following assessments. Our finding suggests using historical records of OH as well as GH indicators to draw better health care plan for geriatrics population.

Figure 1

Significant associations of the current OH (resp. GH) status to the future GH (resp. OH) status, represented by OH and GH indicators. The indicators are non-intact teeth (NT), chewing difficulty (CD), dry mouth (DM), Activities of Daily Living (ADL), Cognitive Performance Scale (CPS), Depression Rating Scale (DRS), and Changes in Health, End-Stage Disease, Signs, and Symptoms Scale (CHESS). The arrows indicate the direction of association. For example the arrow from CD to ADL means that CD is additionally predictive of ADL in the future.