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Dental News: The Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry is reporting a study that finds gum disease -due to a lack of proper dental health- in the elderly is linked to reduced cognitive ability.
The study, done by the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York, found that test subjects with the highest levels of the gum disease-causing pathogen Porphyromonas Gingivalis were three times more likely to struggle with the verbal memory tests, and twice as likely to fail on both delayed verbal recall and subtraction tests.
The study was led by Dr James Noble and found that adults with the highest levels of this pathogen were two times more likely to fail three-digit reverse subtraction tests. This can happen by causing inflammation throughout the body, a known risk factor for loss of mental function.
"Despite the association of periodontitis with stroke and shared risk factors between stroke and dementia, to our knowledge, no epidemiological studies have investigated periodontitis relative to cognition," the study revealed. "Although results presented here are preliminary and inconclusive, a growing body of evidence supports exploration of a possible association between poor dental health and incident dementia."
Monday, November 16, 2009
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This is a very true fact as a very close friend almost died from an unknown origin inflamation throughout her body. Finally a very Smart doctor found severe gum inflamation which led to having her teeth removed and ultimately saving her life. She now has full dentures, which she isn't thrilled about but is very healthy and living a great life. More people need to be educated about this as a cause for inflamation and disease that not only affects the gums but is actually life threatening.
ReplyDeleteI agree that more people need to be educated about this condition. I hope my article in my little corner of the world will do some good in that regards
ReplyDeleteThis is news to me ...all I knew was that the nerves were connected and so affects the brain.Thanks for the informative post.
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