By Regina Sass Researchers at the University of Kentucky have released a report that gives another reason to visit the dentist and maintain good dental health. It shows that tooth loss may be an indication of the development of dementia later in life.

The participants were 144 Nuns from the School Sisters of Notre Dame. They were all enrolled in a study of aging and Alzheimer's disease among members of the community.

They examined the data from 12 years of medical exams and of the participants who did not have dementia at the time of the first exam, those who were classified as having few teeth, 0 to 9, had an increased risk of developing dementia during the course of the study when compared to those who had 10 or more. All of the participants were between the ages of 75 to 98 and live in the order's Milwaukee province.

There have been many studies done in the past that have shown that dementia patients are more likely to have poor dental health when compared to those who do not have dementia. But there have been very few studies that have looked into the possibility that the poor dental health might contribute to developing dementia.

The researchers have proposed several possibilities for the relationship between tooth loss and dementia. Some of them are periodontal disease and early-life nutritional deficiencies, infections or chronic diseases that may result simultaneously in tooth loss and brain damage, which would mean that tooth loss does not cause dementia, but they are both the result of the same incident. If this is so then the tooth loss can be an early warning sign for dementia and an indication that preventative measures against dementia should be taken. And the researchers do say they are not sure what the association is, but they are planing further research to see exactly what it is. It also means that taking care of dental problem, or more importantly taking measures that prevent the dental disease from happing, can have a beneficial effect on the whole body.

The lead researcher is Pamela Sparks Stein in the UK College of Medicine's Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, and the rest of the team is Mark Desrosiers of the UK Sanders-Brown Center on Aging, Sara Jean Donegan of the Marquette University School of Dentistry, Juan F. Yepes of the UK colleges of Dentistry and Medicine, and Richard J. Kryscio, chair of the Department of Biostatistics in the UK College of Public Health.....

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