Malnutrition and Oral Disease in the Elderly––Is There Any Bidirectional Relationship?

Abstract

The purpose of the review is to find recent evidence for a bidirectional relationship between oral diseases and malnutrition. Electronic search of MEDLINE using PubMed and a manual search of key journals for literature published in English between January 2013 and June 2016, was conducted and resulted in the selection of 25 papers. These selected studies comprised 19 observational studies, which included 17 cross-sectional and 2 longitudinal designs, and 6 interventional studies. A majority of the studies demonstrated a significant association between the following conditions in older adults: older adults with oral diseases are at risk for malnutrition and malnourished older adults are at risk for oral diseases. Treatment with dental prosthesis may have positive effects on the nutritional status of older adults. The current review revealed that research findings support a potential bidirectional relationship between oral diseases and malnutrition; however, there is insufficient evidence to draw definitive conclusions. Additional high-quality studies are necessary to accumulate more evidence.