Oral status of 81 subjects with eating disorders

Abstract

The aim was to explore possible correlations between the oral status of patients undergoing treatment at a special outpatient psychiatric clinic for eating disorders and such variables as psychiatric diagnosis and duration of illness, oral hygiene habits, salivary function, and dietary habits. Healthy volunteers of a similar age were recruited for comparison. The material comprised 100 consecutive referrals, of whom 79 were women and 2 were men (age range 17 to 47, median 25 yr) participated. The eating disorders were diagnosed according to the American Psychiatric Association's DSM III-R criteria. The clinical and radiographic examinations were supplemented by standardized intraoral photographs, study models and salivary analysis. The decayed, missing, filled surfaces (DMFS) index was 15.3+/-10.9, a significantly higher caries frequency than for the reference group. More than half the subjects had erosive tooth wear involving the dentine, and about one-third had very low unstimulated salivary flow rates and very high counts of mutans streptococci and lactobacilli. Erosive tooth wear was significantly correlated to the number of years of binge-eating. Compared to age-matched individuals, subjects with diagnosed eating disorders are more susceptible to both dental caries and erosion. They should be encouraged to adopt appropriately tailored preventive programmes and to have regular dental check-ups.

Risk behaviors related to eating disorders in adolescents and its association with dental erosion

“…With regard to anorexia, the study shows that 33% of those surveyed presented a condition suggestive of developing eating disorders, of which the majority were women and within the age In the present study, there was no association between dental erosion and behavioral risk for eating disorders, unlike results reported by another Brazilian study with adolescents 22 and other international studies that point out a possible causal relationship between eating disorders and dental erosion 23 . It should be noted that the association was confirmed in some studies.…”

“…It should be noted that the association was confirmed in some studies. However, the individuals examined, diagnosed with eating disorders, were selected from psychiatric reference centers, as opposed to the present study that was conducted with adolescents in the school environment 22,23 . In the study of Hermont et al 22 , the age range (15-18 years) may have influenced their findings, since the possible effects of eating disorders would have had time to develop, unlike the present study in which practically half of the sample was under the age of 15 years.…”

Study of salivary and serum vaspin and total antioxidants in anorexia nervosa

“…Reduced salivary flow rate has previously been associated with AN [2,7,[40][41][42][43]. This mechanism in AN is unclear but might be partly mediated by starvation [44,45].…”

Dental Implications of Eating Disorders

“…Caries severity expressed as the average DMF value in the studies by Ohrn et al [33] in patients with eating disorders was 15.3 and significantly statistically exceeded the values obtained from healthy individuals, where it amounted to 10.9. Philipp et al [34] obtained different values.…”

“…Dietary and hygienic habits, the amount and quality of secreted saliva, and applied drugs are important factors. The susceptibility of hard dental tissues is also a contributing factor [31,33,34].…”