Many people lose teeth as they get older, and many people lose somememory capacity as they get older. Could these two things be related? To find out, researchers are exploring the possible links between oralhealth and memory loss.
Richard Crout researches gum disease atthe West Virginia University School of Dentistry. He says in recentyears, oral health researchers have found that tooth and gum diseasehave links to many other health problems - from heart disease topremature birth and pregnancy complications. Now they think there mightbe links to memory loss.
Crout says many dentists see olderpatients with memory loss who come into their offices with teeth thatare a mess. Often that's because these patients have forgotten to dothe basics of self care.
"Now we know that if somebody hasdementia or they are demented or they have Alzheimer's, that they aregoing [to] potentially forget to brush or floss their teeth," he says."That would not be new, but what surprised us was the linkage betweenmild to moderate memory loss and oral disease."
Crout and hisstudents examined data from the NHANES [National Health and NutritionExamination Survey], a national survey of Americans, which asked themabout their health. Subjects in the study also had dental exams. Andthe data showed that people who reported tooth and gum disease hadlower scores on tests that measured memory and cognition.
Onehypothesis that would link oral disease and memory loss relies on newevidence about how tissue inflammation affects the brain.
"Ourhypothesis is that there are inflammatory byproducts that come from theinfection that exists in our mouths, particularly with the moreadvanced form of gum disease," Crout says. "And these byproducts canthen travel to areas of the brain that have been noted to be an area ofconcern for those patients with memory loss."
But he says it canbe hard to determine which problem comes first - memory loss ordiseases in the mouth. To tease out that relationship, Crout says hewill need to study patients over a long period of time, watching forboth periodontal disease and memory loss. He recently received a largegrant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health to pursue this lineof investigation.
"For certain sets of patients, we would havetheir baseline inflammatory markers in the blood. In other words, wewould know the levels of these different levels of toxins," Crout says.
"We then have their dental examinations and their periodontalexaminations done, and we then have their memory tests done. So what wewould do is that we would then perform an intervention."
Anintervention could be, for example, to give some patients an electrictoothbrush that helps them care for their mouths better, while otherpatients just get a regular toothbrush. Then Crout would watch overtime and measure what is happening to these patients' ability toremember.
He says it might take many years before he gets an answer to his hypothesis.