Oral Health and Nutrient Intake Among Elderly Brazilians

Objectives: The aim of this study was to evaluate the relationship between nutrient intake, nutritional status and oral health among non-institutionalized elderly people.

Methods: The sample comprised 816 elderly people aged 60 and over, from Vitória-ES, Brazil. Patients underwent a clinical examination and completed a personal data form. Subjects were allocated into groups according to the number of teeth and the number of posterior occluding pairs of natural teeth. Agreement between examiners was achieved using the Kappa index. Dietary was evaluated by means of the 24-hour diet recall interview on two nonconsecutive days and this data was converted into nutrient intake (vitamin c, calcium, carbohydrate, iron, dietary fiber, phosphorus and protein). Nutritional status was determined using the Body Mass Index. The statistical analysis included descriptive and inferential analyses, using a 5% significance level. To calculate the associations a linear model adjusted for sex, age and social class was used. Associations between categorical variables were tested using chi-square analysis.

Results: Ages ranged from 60 to 96 years (mean, 71.46), with 47% of the respondents in the 60 to 69-year-old group. Most of the subjects were in the edentulous group (44.6%), 12.3% had 21 or more teeth; 25.9% had 1 to 10 teeth and 17.3% were found to have 11 to 20 teeth. Significant differences (p<0.05) were observed between the number of teeth and the mean intake of nutrients after adjustment for sex, age and social class. In relation to the BMI it was observed that 42% were overweight, 23,4% were obese and 32,5% were at the normal range. No significant differences were found between the number of posterior pairs of teeth and BMI.

Conclusions: Nutrient intake was associated to the number of teeth among elderly but nutritional status was not associated to the number of posterior occluding pairs of natural teeth.