Association of Tooth Loss and Hypertension Among Middle and Older Aged Indian Population

Background- The perpetuity has become a rising trend in advanced and growing countries around the globe. This phenomenon has altered several aspects of social, economic, political and biomedical dynamic. In public health, there’s need to understand the challenge to society due to this multifaceted dynamics in a holistic way. High blood pressure is recognized as the most leading risk element for chronic diseases. It is considered as one of the modifiable risk factor for life threatening conditions likeheart failure, coronary artery disease, chronic renal failure and cerebrovascular disease. Apart from the properly-mounted reasons of hypertension, markers of oral inflammation, which include periodontal diseases and tooth loss are independently associated with high blood pressure. However this opinion is still not conclusive. Objective-To find association of tooth loss and hypertension in middle and old aged population. Methodology-A cross-sectional study was conducted among individuals who were aged above 40 years and reported to the Outpatient  Department of the Kothiwal Dental College and Research Centre Moradabad. The study procedure included face to face interview using prestructured questionnaire which included demographic characteristics  (age, sex, education, marital status, area of residence), socioeconomic status, health-related behaviour, periodontal status. Hypertension and diabetes were recorded as reported by the participants. Results- Partial tooth loss was found associated with hypertension on crude comparison.24% of participants with partial tooth loss had hypertension, but after adjusting confounding variables there was no statistical significant association between partial tooth loss and hypertension(OR 0.829; 95%CI:0.348-1.586) with p- value =0.977. Conclusion-Hypertension was higher among the participants with partial tooth loss. But there was   not found independent association between tooth loss and hypertension. Keywords- Hypertension; Tooth loss