Oral Health and Diabetes

Coordinator
Project Oral Health for Juvenile Diabetics

• Sugar intake largely determines disease in oral health and diabetes.
• Success in improving oral health and blood sugar levels are largely dependent on the patient's knowledge and motivation.
• Both require considerable amount of money. Diabetes requires frequent monitoring of blood sugar levels, daily injections of insulin while dental treatment is not subsidize by the medical insurance.
• Increasing awareness and educating the patient has been shown to be highly effective in improving oral health and diabetes

Patients in these study were recruited from the Philippine General Hospital, Institute for Studies in Diabetes Foundation, Inc., and the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation Philippines, Inc. Only about half (34/65 or 47.9%) of the participants monitored their blood sugar at home at least once a day.

The DMFT index is a simple count of the number of decayed, missing and filled teeth in an individual averaged over a population or age group. It is the a widely accepted method for comparing prevalence of tooth decay between populations

  AgeGrp Decayed Missing Filled DMFT
1    1-5     1.0     0.0    2.5  3.5
2   6-10     6.9     0.5    0.8  8.2
3  11-15     6.6     0.8    1.3  8.7
4  16-20    11.4     1.0    1.7 14.3
5  21-25     8.9     3.5    1.4 14.3
6  26-30     5.4     7.5    4.3 19.3