Many people over the age of 55 are now regretting that they may not have taken the best care of their teeth when they were younger. Research shows that six out of ten people age 55 and over in the UK regret not taken better care of their teeth. Around one in five people in the UK wear full or partial dentures and an estimated 2.5 million people have no natural teeth. Despite oral health improving significantly in recent decades many people born in the 1960s and earlier lived in an era when oral health education was not widely available and their oral health has suffered.

A study by scientists from the Yale University School of Medicine found changes in mouth bacteria preceded the development of the inflammatory lung condition in hospital patients. The team followed 37 subjects over a month. They found patients on ventilators who developed pneumonia had experienced a significant shift in the ‘bacterial composition’ in their mouths beforehand. Lead author Dr Samit Joshi told ELS Global Medical News, that their findings may improve the way we prevent pneumonia in the future by maintaining the bacteria which live within our mouths.

An observational study featured in the online journal BMJ Open reveals that persistent dental plaque can potentially raise the risk of dying early from cancer. Researchers decided to establish whether dental plaque may influence the risk of early death from cancer due to infection and inflammation, as both factors are believed to play a role in up to one in five different types of cancer. At the end of the study in 2009, the team registered 58 deaths of which about a third (35.6%) were women and 35 of these deaths were due to cancer. The average age of the deceased was 61 year for women and 60 years for the men. The women’s life expectancy would have been about 13 years longer, whilst that of the men would have been 8.5 years longer, which places them into the ‘premature deaths’ category. ? Whilst the women predominantly died from breast cancer, the men’s deaths were caused by a various different cancers. ??

The researchers observed that the deceased had a higher dental plaque index, compared with the survivors. Their values ranged from 0.84 to 0.91, which suggests the gums of their teeth were covered with plaque, whilst that of the survivors was consistently lower, i.e. 0.66 to 0.67, suggesting a partial cover with dental plaque. After accounting for all risk factors the team discovered that the risk of dying from cancer was almost two-fold with age, and that male gender had a 90% increased risk.

Although tooth loss has decreased over the last four decades, US adults with diabetes lose twice as many teeth as adults without diabetes, according to a new study by researchers at Duke University. Moreover, the researchers found that black Americans with diabetes are at greater risk of experiencing tooth loss as they age than white or Mexican Americans with diabetes.

A University of Sydney study has revealed that tooth decay (dental caries) can be stopped, reversed, and prevented without the need for the traditional ‘fill and drill’ approach that has dominated dental care for decades. The results of the seven year study, published today in Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology, found that the need for fillings was reduced by 30 to 50 per cent through preventative oral care.

A study in the current issue of the journal Anesthesia Progress looked at whether a patient’s level of pain before a root canal changed the effectiveness of local anesthesia. The research showed that the more active pain a patient felt before the procedure, the lower the pain threshold was for that patient during surgery.

Coronary heart disease patients with no teeth have nearly double the risk of death as those with all of their teeth, according to research published today in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.1 The study in more than 15 000 patients from 39 countries found that levels of tooth loss were linearly associated with increasing death rates.

DentalBenfit.com hopes that everyone will have many happy smiles throughout the up coming year.  Please keep us in mind for any of your dental insurance dental plan needs.  

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