Life Satisfaction and Dental Visits in Adults Aged ≥50 Years and Living with Diabetes Mellitus: A Comparison between Urban and Rural Mexican

OBJECTIVE: To examine the association between low life satisfaction with past-year dental visits in a rural-urban national sample of 50-year-old Mexican adults with diabetes mellitus (DM). METHODS: Data are drawn from the Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS), a cross-sectional study conducted in 2018 involving 3,592 older adults aged 50 years and older and living in urban and rural areas in Mexico. Life satisfaction was measured using the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) and past-year dental visits dichotomized as none and ≥1 dental visits. The Poisson regression analyses were used to assess the association, adjusting for confounders. RESULTS: 62.9% were women, mean age was 65.5 (±9.6), and 16.5% lived in a rural area, while the female subjects continue to present a higher probability of visiting a dentist (PR = 1.28 (95% CI 1.08–1.51)). In terms of age, the ≥70-year group presented 28% lower possibility of visiting a dentist (PR = 0.72 (95% CI 0.60–0.86)). The interaction showed that adults ≥50 years who reside in a rural area and have low life satisfaction were 40% less likely to have visited a dentist in the last year (PR = 0.60 (95% CI 0.37–0.98)) than adults ≥50 years who reside in an urban area and have high life satisfaction. CONCLUSIONS: The present study highlights the association between low life satisfaction and past-year dental visits in rural populations. Therefore, rurality should be considered a possible confounder in analysis of life satisfaction in the older adult population.