Dental Care Use, Edentulism, and Systemic Health among Older Adults.

ABSTRACT: Past research suggests there are systematic associations between oral health and chronic illness among older adults. Although causality has not yet been credibly established, periodontitis has been found to be associated with higher risk of both heart disease and stroke. We advance this literature by estimating the direct association between dental care use and systemic health using multiple waves of the 1992 to 2016 Health and Retirement Study. Through the inclusion of individual fixed effects in our regression models, we account for unobservable time-invariant characteristics of individuals that might otherwise bias estimates of the association between dental care use and health. We find statistically significant negative associations between dental care use and the number of health cond

SUBMITTER: Meyerhoefer CD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8640335 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature