This study employed data from the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA) to determine the longitudinal association between oral health status and the occurrence of dementia in older adults. Among the participants of the KLoSA, 4,876 individuals who were aged 60 years or older at the time of the seventh wave (2018) and had never been diagnosed with dementia or mild cognitive impairment were selected. The oral health of the participants was assessed using four variables: use of removable denture, subjective masticatory function, number of remaining teeth, and the Geriatric Oral Health Assessment Index (GOHAI) in 2018. Participants were followed up until 2022 to track the onset of dementia. A multivariate Cox proportional hazard regression model, adjusting all possible confounders, indicated that poorer subjective masticatory function, fewer remaining teeth, and lower GOHAI scores were associated with increased risk of dementia. Wearing dentures was not significantly associated with dementia risk. A longitudinal association was identified between poor oral health and the occurrence of dementia.
Choi et al. (Wed,) studied this question.