Mortality rates of community-residing adults with and without dentures.

Aim: To prospectively study how dental status with and without dentures could become a predictor of overall mortality risk.

Methods: Five thousand six hundred eighty-eight community residents over 40 years old in the Miyako Islands, Okinawa Prefecture, Japan, were followed up for 15 years from 1987-2002.

Results: We found that female subjects with less than 10 functional teeth and without dentures showed a significantly higher mortality rate than those with dentures. There was no significant difference of mortality rates in male subjects. There were no significant differences of mortality rates between subjects with 10 or more functional teeth with and without dentures.

Conclusion: The present study suggests that dentures are one of the factors associated with mortality rates especially in female subjects with less than 10 functional teeth.