Abstract
The aim of this study is to compare breath odors and odor emission sources (saliva, tongue coat, and dentures in current use) of the elderly and to define the relation-ships between the odors. Fifteen patients visiting theoutpatient clinic, Tokyo Medicaland Dental University Geriatric Dentistry, wererecruited. The breath, saliva, denture, and tongue coat of each individual wer collected as samples. Then, the gas evaporatingfrom each sample was saved in a sampling bag. The sampling gas was measured by anelectronic nos (Odor Discrimination Analyzer FF-1, Shimazdu, Japan). In principle component analysis, principle component 1 showed significant differences between threepairs of items: breath odor (BR) and the odor of the saliva (SL), breath odor and the odorof the denture (DE), and breath odor and the odor of tongue coat (TC) (p<0.001). Therewere no significant differences between SL and TC, SL and DE, and TC and DE. The meandifferences between BR and the each odor emission source showed that DE was the nearest to BR, then SL, and TC lastly. In this study, TC, previously named as one ofthe main causes of breath odor, has no relation with BR. Moreover, TC is related to SLand DE in the elderly. It is suggested that one of the main odor emission sources ofbreath odor may be the dentures.
