Relationship between temporomandibular disorders and oral frailty/frailty in older people

<p>Purpose: The signs and symptoms of temporomandibular disorders (TMD) might affect oral and general functions. However, the relationships between TMD signs/symptoms and masticatory performance, oral/general frailty, and weight change are still unclear, especially in the elderly population. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the relationship between TMD signs/symptoms and antecedent factors in elderly people who attended or lived in nursing homes.</p><p>Methods: The subjects were the elderly residents of nursing homes in Okayama, Tokushima, and Hiroshima prefectures who gave written informed consent. The subjects were asked to answer a questionnaire concerning TMD signs/symptoms (DC/TMD questionnaire), a frailty/oral frailty questionnaire (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare Basic Checklist), and a mastication performance questionnaire (Hirai Ingestible Food Questionnaire). TMD signs/symptoms consisted of jaw pain, joint noise, jaw opening difficulty, limitation in jaw opening, pain during jaw opening, and jaw closing difficulty. Based on the results of these questionnaire survey, the subjects were divided into two groups, a TMD symptomatic group and an asymptomatic group, and the relationship between them and frailty/oral frailty, mastication score, BMI and presence of weight loss were investigated. The significance level was set at 5%.</p><p>Results and Discussion: A total of 145 eligible subjects (mean age: 87.1±7.7 years) participated in this study. Among them, 20 subjects were classified into the TMD symptomatic group, and 125 subjects into the TMD asymptomatic group. The TMD symptomatic group showed a significantly higher mastication score than the TMD asymptomatic group (p = 0.01, t-test). The subgroup with jaw opening difficulty showed a significant relationship with weight loss (p = 0.02, Fisher's exact test).</p><p>These results suggest that there is an association between weight loss and jaw opening difficulty in the elderly, however, the causal relationship is unclear. Furthermore, this research had several limitations, which must be clarified in future research.</p>