FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH CARIES INCIDENCE IN AN ELDERLY POPULATION

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.