Methods: 337 persons born in Newcastle in May and June 1947 were followed to age 50 years. Detailed information on their health, growth and social circumstances were collected prospectively at various stages of the lifecourse. At age 50 participants also completed a 49 item Oral Health Impact Profile (OHIP) providing data on OHR-QoL. The outcome was the proportion of variation in 3 OHIP summary measures (total OHIP score and impact frequency variables) explained by factors operating during: fetal life (gender, birthweight, socioeconomic variables); infancy and childhood (breastfeeding duration, dummy use, socioeconomic position), and adulthood (social and lifestyle variables including diet and smoking, number of retained teeth).
Results: Six models were constructed according to sex and OHIP variable. The overall r2 for the models were 17-29%. The greatest proportion of variation in total OHIP score was explained by factors acting during early life in men (9%) and by the number of retained teeth in women (16%). In both men and women, early life accounted for the most variance in the number of frequently occurring OHIP impacts (19% and 10% respectively) but after adding infrequent impacts, factors acting during adulthood explained the most variation in men (12%), and the number of retained teeth accounted for the most (15%) in women.
Conclusions: Influences on OHR-QoL are different for men and women and vary according to frequency of impact, but social background may be an important correlate with perceived oral health in later life, particularly with frequently occurring impacts.