Title

Association between disability and periodontal diseases in older adults

Authors

Anushree Tiwari¹,*, Archana Patel², Shubhra Raghav³, Rahul Katiyar⁴, Aparna Dave⁵, Hemal Patel⁶ & Santosh Kumar⁷

Affiliation

¹Independent Researcher, Paoli, Pennsylvania, 19301, USA; ²Department of Pharmacology, Smt. B. K. Shah Medical Institute & Research Center, Sumandeep Vidhyapeeth, Waghodia, Vadodara, Gujarat, India; ³Department of Public health Dentistry, Kothiwal Dental College & Research Centre, Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh, India; ⁴Department of Periodontology, Maharana Pratap Dental College, Kothi, Mandhana, Kanpur-209217, Uttar Pradesh, India; ⁵Department of Oral Pathology, Faculty of Dental Sciences, SGT University, Gurugram, Haryana, India; ⁶Department of Public Health Dentistry, Faculty of Dental Science, Dharmsinh Desai University, Nadiad, Gujarat, India; ⁷Department of Periodontology & Implantology, Karnavati University, Uvarsad, Gandhinagar, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India; *Corresponding author

Email

Anushree Tiwari - E-mail: tiwarianushree88@gmail.com
Archana Patel - E-mail: archanadrpj@gmail.com
Shubhra Raghav - E-mail: shubhra.raghav@gmail.com
Rahul Katiyar - E-mail: rahulktr24682@outlook.com
Aparna Dave - E-mail: aparna.dave@sgtuniversity.org
Hemal Patel - E-mail: phemal87@gmail.com
Santosh Kumar - E-mail: santoshkumar@karnavatiuniversity.edu.in

Article Type

Research Article

Date

Received January 1, 2026; Revised January 31, 2026; Accepted January 31, 2026, Published January 31, 2026

Abstract

Periodontal diseases and functional disability are important issues of collective health among the aging groups of people. Therefore, it is of interest to establish the relationship between disability status and prevalence and severity of periodontal diseases in community-based older adults aged 65 years and above. Hence, a total of 384 of them received a complete periodontal examination and disability evaluation based on Barthel Index and Lawton Instrumental Activities of Daily Living scale, with the disability being none, mild, moderate and severe. Findings showed a much higher prevalence of moderate-to-severe periodontitis in the disabled (78.3 percent) than in non-disabled persons (52.1 percent, p=0.001) and also that multivariate analysis showed that severe disability independently predicted periodontal disease (OR=3.84, 95 percent CI: 2.17-6.79, p=0.001) after controlling confounders. Thus, we show the urgent necessity of the combination of geriatric care that would help to prevent the cyclical decline of aging groups by targeting both functional capacity and oral health preservation.

Keywords

Functional disability, periodontal disease, older adults, plaque index, probing depth, clinical attachment loss

Citation

Tiwari et al. Bioinformation 22(1): 322-327 (2026)

Edited by

Vini Mehta

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.