Journal of oral rehabilitation
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Comparative Study
Relationship between dental state and dietary intake in 70-year-old males and females in Göteborg, Sweden: a population study.
A representative sample of 368 70-year-old males and females in Göteborg, Sweden, participated in an odontological examination and a dietary interview. The aim of the study was to relate dental state to dietary habits and, furthermore, to study the possible influence of some social factors on these relations. The degree of dental invalidity was measured with Eichner's index. ⋯ The proportion of probands with insufficient intake of nutrients was in one or more respects higher among the edentulous than in the dentate and highest in the female edentulous probands with only one or no denture. Insufficient intakes of some nutrients were significantly related to the degree of dental invalidity. These relations remained unchanged in males but not in females when some socio-economic factors were introduced as confounding factors in a multivariate relation analysis; which might be due to the fact that these social factors play a more important role in females than in males.
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The Balkwill angle and the height of the Bonwill triangle were measured on cephalograms of 128 adult females and males who had all their natural teeth. The size of the Balkwill angle was dependent on the choice of the condylar reference point, whereas the height of the Bonwill triangle was not. When analysed by sex, it was found that the Balkwill angle was larger in males than in females. Likewise, the height of the Bonwill triangle was larger in males.
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Six male subjects exercised maximal voluntary tooth clenching until fatigue appeared in the masseter muscle and until pains and exhaustion of this muscle could no longer be endured; that is, the fatigue threshold and the pain tolerance of the muscle were determined in seconds. An occlusal splint was inserted and the clenching exercises were repeated. During these exercises, and also during 10s of clenching, the electrical activity in the masseter muscle was recorded by bipolar surface electrodes and linearly integrated. ⋯ As the periods of clenching increased, after insertion of the splint, the electrical activity decreased consistently, and use of the splint caused a significant decrease in the electrical activity of the pain tolerance test. As induced by the splint, there was no orderly pattern in changes of the fatigue thresholds and pain tolerances in relation to changes in the electrical activities of these parameters. The mode of action of the splint, in reducing the muscle activity, might have been that of stretching the elevator jaw muscles beyond their resting length.