Oral Health Related Factors Predicting Severe COVID‐19 Disease in Elderly Swedes.

ABSTRACT Objectives Methods Results Conclusion To analyse different background factors that may serve as predictors for acquiring symptoms of severe COVID‐19 disease.A postal questionnaire was sent to the total population of individuals born between 1942 (80 years, n = 6299) and 1932 (90 years, n = 1904) living in the Örebro and Östergötland counties, Sweden, in 2017 and repeated in 2022. Tentative predictive factors for self‐reported severe COVID‐19 disease were based on the responses from the 2017 questionnaire related to general and oral health and prior to the outbreak of the COVID‐19 pandemic.Response rate to the main questionnaire in 2022 was 66% (5375/8203), and 577 reported having been sick with COVID‐19 out of which 359 agreed to answer a separate questionnaire on COVID‐19. This questionnaire was returned by 278/359 of the participants corresponding to a response rate of 77%. Information gleaned from the 2017 pre‐COVID‐19 survey revealed a relatively large number of associations between severity of subsequently self‐reported COVID‐19 disease and several diverse tentative related factors found in unadjusted regression analyses. Based on statistically significant correlations in the adjusted regression analysis, significant predictive factors (based on self‐reports from 2017) for contracting severe COVID‐19 were in decreasing order of odds ratios (OR): reported removable partial or complete denture usage (OR 6.2, CI 2.2–17.2); reported periodontal problems in the past year (OR 3.4, CI 1.1–10.4); and reported daytime dry mouth (OR 2.5, CI 1.2–5.2).Removable dentures, periodontal problems and daytime dry mouth were predictors for developing symptoms of severe COVID‐19 disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]