A growing number of older Americans still have their teeth, according to research recently released by the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The first state-by-state analysis found that in 26 states, including Illinois, more than half of adults 65 and older had not lost more than five teeth.
The retention rate continues a decades-long trend toward better mouth care. In the 1950s more than half of adults aged 65 and older had lost all their teeth, while now only a third have lost all their natural teeth.
“We expect that rates of complete tooth loss will continue to decline substantially as younger persons, who had much lower rates of dental cavities and tooth extraction during their young-adult years, age,” said study author Dr. Barbara Gooch, with the CDC’s National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion.
Flu and pregnancy
A new study finds that women who have a fever during the second trimester of pregnancy are more likely to give birth to children who develop behavioral and psychological disorders.
“It’s the first study to look at fever with respect to psychological and behavioral outcomes,” said lead author Stefan Dombrowski, an assistant professor of graduate education at Rider University in Lawrenceville, N.J. “If moms do happen to get sick, it’s important to be aware of elevated fever and try to control that.”
The study appears in a recent issue of Birth Defects Research. Dombrowski and colleagues looked at a Finnish study of 6,401 children. It compared outcomes at 6 months, 5 years and 12 years for children whose mothers never reported fever in pregnancy and children whose mothers reported fever in the second and third trimesters. The findings demonstrate a connection between second trimester fever and various measures of temperament, behavior and academic performance.
But Dr. Owen Montgomery, an associate professor of clinical obstetrics and gynecology at Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia, cautioned that such a connection has not been shown in research published in major clinical journals. “I have concerns about worrying unnecessarily 4 million pregnant women in this season of cold and flu that they would then be dooming their children to psychological damage in the rest of their lives.”
Women who are pregnant should get a flu shot, exercise, eat a healthy diet, get plenty of rest and practice proper hygiene, Montgomery advised. But they should not panic if they feel a cold or flu coming on.
“Women are going to get the flu, and if they’re sick, they can absolutely call their doctor or midwife,” he said.
Heigh-ho, silver cars
Silver cars are less likely to be involved in a crash than autos of other colors, epidemiologists at the University of Auckland in New Zealand found. Their analysis of statistics from a two-year study of 571 auto accidents that caused injuries in Auckland found the risk of having a serious injury was 50 percent lower in silver cars than in autos that are white, yellow, gray, red or blue. It also found “a significant increased risk of a serious injury” in brown vehicles and a slightly increased risk for black and green cars.
The report comes in a traditionally semi-serious Christmas issue of the British Medical Journal devoted to studies off the beaten track. But Sue Furness, a research fellow at the university’s School of Public Health who submitted the car-color paper as her dissertation for a master’s degree, stands by the results, saying, “Our conclusions are valid for the location where the study was done.”
A more jaundiced view is taken by Russ Rader of the U.S. Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
“The claim that car color could have this effect in reducing accidents is preposterous,” Rader said.
