Anticholinergic burden, oral hygiene practices, and oral hygiene status—cross-sectional findings from the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966

OBJECTIVES: To study the association between anticholinergic burden and oral hygiene practices and oral hygiene status among 46-year-old people. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study included 1945 participants from the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966 (NFBC1966), who had a complete dental status. The participants underwent clinical medical and dental examinations, and their medication data were gathered by combining self-reported drug use with information from the National Prescription Register. Anticholinergic burden was measured using nine previously published anticholinergic scales. Oral hygiene practices were assessed with toothbrushing frequency and oral hygiene status with the presence of visible dental plaque. Poisson regression with robust variance estimation and negative binomial regression models were used to estimate relative risks (RR). RESULTS: Thirty percent of the participants reported brushing their teeth twice a day and about 25% of their teeth had dental plaque on them. Fifteen percent of the participants used at least one anticholinergic drug or had an anticholinergic burden according to the nine anticholinergic scales. After adjustments for confounding factors, the RRs of anticholinergic burden varied between 0.95 and 1.11 for toothbrushing frequency. Anticholinergic burden (according to Anticholinergic Activity Scale, Anticholinergic Cognitive Burden, Chew’s scale) was associated statistically significantly with the number of teeth with dental plaque. For the three scales, RRs varied from 1.24 to 1.50. CONCLUSIONS: Anticholinergic burden associated with poor oral hygiene. CLINICAL RELEVANCE: The findings stress the importance of providing oral hygiene instructions and prophylactic measures to patients taking anticholinergic drugs. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s00784-020-03485-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.