Salivary changes and dental caries as potential oral markers of autoimmune salivary gland dysfunction in primary Sjögren's syndrome

Table 5 Explanatory power of age as well as subjective and objective salivary variables on DMFS in the patient group and control group all together (n = 40).

	Estimate for DMFS	SD for DMFS estimate	Adjusted R-squared	P-value
Subjective model
Age	1.4	0.4	0.26	<0.001
+ oral dryness questionnaire	11.1	2.3	0.53	<0.001
Objective model
Age	1.4	0.4	0.26	<0.001
+ UWS	-57.4	20.7	0.37	<0.001
+ SWS	-28.9	9.4	0.49	<0.001
+ UPS	-499.2	173.0	0.57	<0.001

Estimate, SD, adjusted R-squared, and P-value obtained by multiple regression analysis. The estimate states the increase or decrease in DMFS upon addition of the explaining variables (age + oral dryness, or + UWS, SWS, and UPS) by an integer (one year, score, or ml). Since complaints of oral dryness and salivary flow demonstrated strong interrelations they could not be included in the same analysis. As shown age in combination with complaints of oral dryness explained 53% of the variance in DMFS, and age combined with salivary flow rates explained 57%.

ISSN: 1472-6890