Relation Between Components of Oral Health and Sarcopenia in Older Adults: a Narrative Review

Introduction. With the growing population of older adults, a spike in the problems related to aging is expected, with sarcopenia being the foremost. Among the pleth-ora of factors contributing to the development of sarcopenia, oral hypofunction is one among them and there is a growing number of findings on the link between oral health and sarcopenia. However, the strength of this relationship specifically in the older adult population is poorly understood. Objective. To determine the relationship between oral health and sarcopenia among older adults. Materials and methods. Systematic literature search was conducted in the five elec-tronic databases like PubMed, Scopus, Embase, CINAHL and Web of Science, the identified records were exported to Rayyan software, duplicates were removed, and screening of title and abstracts was done. Details about the relationship were extracted from the full text records. Results. Twenty studies were included in this review, and nineteen are cross-section-al and one cohort design, carried out in South-East Asian nations. The usage of full dentures, masticatory function, tongue pressure, jaw opening force, and the number of surviving teeth have all been demonstrated to significantly correlate with grip strength. Skeletal muscle mass and tongue pressure is found to have a strong association. Gait speed and tongue pressure have a weak association and those who have a loss of at least 10 teeth have been found to walk with less pace. Conclusions. There exists a relationship between sarcopenia and various components of oral health and oral function among older adults.