Dental 4 Less, Risk of pneumonia in the elderly doubled by sleeping in dentures
Poor oral health and hygiene are increasingly recognized as major risk factors for pneumonia among the elderly. Toshimitsu Iinuma, Nihon University School of Dentistry, Japan, and a team of researchers help to identify modifiable oral health-related risk factors. Lead researcher prospectively investigated associations between a constellation of oral health behaviors and incidents of pneumonia in the community-living of elders 85 years of age or older. This study, titled “Denture Wearing During Sleep Doubles the Risk of Pneumonia in Very Elderly,” has been published by the International and American Associations for Dental Research (IADR/AADR in the OnlineFirst portion of the Journal of Dental Research (JDR).
This study provides empirical evidence that denture wearing during sleep is associated not only with oral inflammatory and microbial burden but also with incident pneumonia, suggesting potential implications of oral hygiene programs for pneumonia prevention in the community. Frauke Mueller, University of Geneva, Switzerland, wrote a perspective titled “Oral Hygiene Reduces the Mortality From Aspiration Pneumonia in Frail Elders,” commenting that these findings lead to a simple and straight forward clinical recommendation — denture wearing during the night should be discouraged in geriatric patients.