Kazuya Ikenishi

Abstract

Healthy aging draw attention around the world. Preventing frailty is an important issue for extending a healthy life expectancy. The oral frailty is one of key points for it in community dwelling elder people. The purpose of this study was to clarify the relationship between symptoms of oral frailty and frailty. Research target was community dwelling elder people (above 65 years old) who had no deterioration of cognitive function and lived independently. Data obtained in this study included demographic factors (age and sex), frailty (Kihon check list), nutritional status (Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA)), and oral symptoms (Oral Health Impact Profile14 (OHIP14)). The frailty and MNA were dichotomous variables with no frailty (non frailty group) or with frailty (frailty group) and having risk of malnutrition or being good nutritional status, respectively. Exploratory factor analysis was carried out to investigate the dimensionality of the OHIP-14 in the present study sample. These factor scores were regarded as oral frailty symptoms deteriorating socializing with others and daily life in this study. After univariate analysis between frailty and age, sex, symptom of oral frailty, MNA (t-test and chi-square test), logistic regression analysis was conducted. Statistical significance was set at p<0.05. This study was approved by the Ethical Committee of Hyogo university (Receipt number 20010). The author has no financial conflicts of interest to disclose concerning the presentation. Participants were 62 males and 98 females, and the mean age of participants is 76.33 years with a standard deviation of 4.83 years (male:76.03±4.55, female:76.52±7.79). 35 subjects (male:3, female:32) were judged as frailty and having risk of malnutrition were 27 (male:15, female:12). Univariate analyses compared sex, age and MNA between two groups. The frailty group were significantly older (p=0.04) and have significantly higher rate of female (p<0.001) and significantly higher risk of malnutrition (p<0.001) than no frailty group. The factor analysis generated two factor scores (MR1, MR2). MR1 was named “disturbing socialization with people and daily life by oral discomfort symptoms”, MR2 done “disturbing diet by oral discomfort symptoms”. MR1 and MR2 were significantly difference with frailty (p=0.001, p<0.001, respectively). The result of the logistic regression analysis with a dependent variable as frailty showed that sex (rf: male, odds ratio=14.53, p=0.001) and age (p=0.002, odds ratio=1.12), MR1 (p<0.001, odds ratio=4.35), MNA (rf: having risk of malnutrition, p=0.002, odds ratio=0.128) were significant variables, but MR2 (p=0.097) were not. The relationship between MR1 and frailty showed that oral discomfort affected socialization with people and daily life. The result was agreed with previous research. For this reason, it was necessary to improve malnutrition of people with oral frailty for frailty prevention.