A team of Chinese researchers analysed data from 8073 older participants and found that people who lost their teeth more quickly had a higher risk of dying, regardless of how many teeth they started with.
Most studies examining the association between faster tooth loss and the risk of death have focused on measuring tooth count at a single time point, without accounting for changes over time. This study—published in BMC Geriatrics—is the first to comprehensively assess the association between loss of teeth over time and mortality in a large cohort of older adults.
Over 3.5 years, the team primarily from Sichuan University studied 8073 older adults aged 73 to 91. They tracked how quickly participants lost teeth over time, measuring this as the average number of teeth lost per year.
Based on the tooth loss pattern, the participants were divided into four groups: stable (no teeth lost per year), slow loss (more than zero but less than two teeth lost per year), moderate loss (two to under four teeth lost per year), and rapid loss (four or more teeth lost per year).
The data were then entered into a Cox regression analysis—a statistical method that accounts for the relative risk of an event—to determine whether faster tooth loss was associated with a higher mortality risk.
The team found that those with rapid tooth loss had a 33 per cent higher risk of death compared to those who lost none. Also, with each tooth lost per year, the risk increases by four per cent.
