Objectives: Associations between saliva volumes or salivary flow rates and potentially xerogenic medication are rarely evaluated in cohorts with a wide age range. This cross-sectional cohort study investigated possible relationships between the regular consumption of potentially xerogenic medication and stimulated saliva volumes.
Methods: Data from the German Studies of Health in Pomerania (SHIP-2 and SHIP-Trend-0) were pooled. Potentially xerogenic medications were identified using the Workshop on Oral Medicine VI criteria. Stimulated saliva was sampled using Salivette®, and saliva volumes expressed as μl/min were determined. Applying linear mixed models with adjustment for time point of saliva collection, associations of (a) age and sex with regularly consumed medication, (b) age and sex with saliva volumes, and (c) the number of regularly consumed xerogenic medications with saliva volumes were evaluated.
Results: Six thousand seven hundred and fifty-three participants aged 20-83 years (mean 53.4 ± 14.9) were included. The average number of medications did not differ markedly between females (2.21 ± 2.46) and males (2.24 ± 2.83). Males took more potentially xerogenic medication (1.0 ± 1.3) than did females (0.9 ± 1.3). Also, males took more potentially xerogenic cardiovascular medications than did females (0.9 ± 1.2 versus 0.7 ± 1.1), while females were prescribed a higher number of potentially xerogenic medications affecting the nervous system (0.2 ± 0.5 versus 0.1 ± 0.4). The average stimulated saliva volume was 967.0 ± 433.3 µL/min. Regularly consumed and potentially xerogenic medications were associated with lower saliva volumes. Older age correlated not only with a higher number of total medications and a higher number of xerogenic medications affecting either the cardiovascular (in males) or the nervous system (in females), but also with lower saliva volumes.
Conclusions: Ageing was associated with polypharmacy, especially with the intake of potentially xerogenic medication, and lower average saliva volumes. With regard to complications of dry mouth, anamnesis of medication consumption is of high importance.
Keywords: Gerodontology; medication; multimorbidity; polypharmacy; saliva; stimulated saliva volumes; xerostomia.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.© 2021 The Authors. Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.