Lv. Powell et al., FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH CARIES INCIDENCE IN AN ELDERLY POPULATION, Community dentistry and oral epidemiology, 26(3), 1998, pp. 170-176
Citations number
16
Categorie Soggetti
Dentistry,Oral Surgery & Medicine","Public, Environmental & Occupation Heath
The purpose of this paper was to identify baseline factors associated
with future caries development in older adults (age 60+) during a S-ye
ar study period. Poisson regression analysis was used to determine the
association between potential risk factors and disease incidence. The
significant factors associated with high coronal caries incidence rat
es were high baseline root DMFS (P<0.001), high counts of mutans strep
tococci and lactobacilli (P=0.036), male gender (P=0.007), and Asian e
thnicity (P=0.002). These factors had small to moderate effects on inc
idence rates, with relative risk values of approximately 1.2 to 2. The
significant factors associated with higher disease incidence on root
surfaces were baseline coronal DMFS (marginally significant, P=0.078),
high bacterial counts (P=0.002), and Asian ethnicity (P=0.009). The p
redictive value of the models was low for both coronal and root caries
. This result may be because this population had a higher than usual c
aries incidence rate, making discrimination among these caries-active
individuals difficult. The current study affirmed the value of baselin
e DMFS and salivary variables to modeling caries incidence and introdu
ced ethnicity as a variable useful for the study of dental caries in o
lder adults.