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Poor oral health linked to poorer academic performance for youth
Students with dental problems were significantly more likely to have a relatively low GPA and miss more school days compared with students who had healthy teeth, according to recent study results.
Roseann Mulligan, DDS, MS, and colleagues of the Ostrow School of Dentistry at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, performed clinical dental examinations on 1,495 disadvantaged elementary and high school students from Los Angeles County public schools.
The researchers performed logistic regression analyses to determine the association between students’ oral health and their academic achievement and school absences, as well as their parents’ absences from school or work.
Students with toothaches in the past 6 months were almost four times more likely to have a GPA lower than the median of 2.8 compared with students without toothaches (OR=3.7; 95% CI, 1.8-7.6). Students with toothaches were almost six times (OR=5.7; 95% CI, 3.5-9.3) more likely to miss school days — and their parents four times (OR=4.1; 95% CI, 2.5-6.5) more likely to miss school or work — as a result of their dental problems compared with students not having toothaches (P<.001). Students who needed dental health care but did not have access to it were three times more likely to miss school days because of dental problems vs. students with access to dental care (OR=3.0; 95% CI, 1.8-5.0).
Ostrow School of Dentistry researchers had previously found that 73% of disadvantaged youth in Los Angeles have dental caries.
“We have illustrated that there is indeed an impact of oral health on the student’s academic performance,” the researchers wrote. “Although at an individual level the actual number of days absent from school to deal with dental problems may be trivial, our subjective and objective measures suggest that there are likely to be many more days wherein the student is suffering from the pain of untreated dental disease, thus accounting for poorer academic performance.”
Mulligan and colleagues said oral health education must be more integrated into other health, educational and social programs for children, their parents and other health providers who interact with children.
“Encouraging good oral health through proper nutrition, good home oral care habits and regular checkups for preventive treatments is a message that the entire health care team needs to promote,” Mulligan told Healio.com. “The most common oral diseases are infectious but preventable and all should be aware of the causes of, and watchful for, early and reversible indicators of disease. With early intervention, the destruction and pain associated with untreated oral disease may be minimized and preventive modalities can be undertaken to limit further harm.”
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.
