The Independent and Combined Associations of Multimorbidity and Polypharmacy on Periodontal Disease Severity and Progression in Older Adults.

The study included 5,645 patients for cross-sectional analysis and a sub-cohort of 2,130 for longitudinal analysis.

Longitudinally, hyperpolypharmacy (10+ medications) and each additional comorbidity were associated with an annual CAL loss of 0.08 mm (p = 0.002) and 0.03 mm (p = 0.001), respectively.

The machine learning model predicted disease progression with an AUC-ROC of 0.81, 94% specificity, and 61% recall.

Baseline MEAN_CAL, smoking, age, bleeding on probing, diabetes, and the number of medications were the most important predictors.