# Prediction of Health Care Costs by Dental Health Care Costs and Periodontal Status
###### Abstract  
Reducing health care costs is an important issue in Japan. The aim of this study was to analyze the contribution of oral health to health care costs and to predict health care costs by statistical modeling. Data from 46 individuals (29 men and 17 women; mean age of \(44.6\pm 1.7\) years) on health care costs, dental health care costs, and the results of the salivary levels of lactate dehydrogenase (LD) over two years were provided by the association. Multilayer perceptron neural networks were applied to predict the health care costs from data from the previous year and included health care costs, dental health care costs, and salivary levels of LD. Nonlinear relationships were observed between medical health care costs, dental health care costs, and periodontal conditions. The health care costs from the previous year were the most important predictor of health care costs. The simulation results showed that health care costs decreased with the increase in dental health care costs from the previous year. Health care costs increased with increasing salivary levels of LD from the previous year. Improvements in periodontal conditions and dental health care may play some roles in reducing health care costs.  
health care cost; saliva; periodontal disease; neural network +
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cause atherosclerosisclerosis [9; 10; 11]. Based on these facts, oral health status may be related to health care costs. The treatment and prevention of dental diseases may lead to a decrease in medical costs.  
Since 2000, the Japanese government has planned and implemented government policies to extend healthy longevity through health promotion. This plan is called Healthy Japan 21. The main target of this plan is the prevention of noncommunicable diseases. In this declaration, to prevent noncommunicable diseases, dental health promotion is included in the six main pillars as follows: nutrition and dietary habits, physical activity and exercise, rest, drinking of alcohol, smoking of tobacco, and oral health [12].  
In addition, the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare stipulates that the insurer must analyze medical costs and the results of the annual health checkup to make plans to prevent a rise in medical costs. Prediction and simulation must prevent a rise in medical costs. However, there is little information on the correlation between medical health care costs, dental health care costs, and oral health status. The main reason is that it is almost impossible to calculate and analyze health care costs without a national insurance system for the whole nation.  
The implementation of dental checkups in annual health checkups is a burden for insurers because of the high costs of dental work. Therefore, to evaluate the condition of periodontal disease, the salivary levels of lactate dehydrogenase (LD) have been adopted as a biomarker [10]. In previous studies, the salivary concentration of LD correlated with the state of periodontal disease, and the value of LD has been shown to reflect inflammation of periodontal tissue [13; 14; 15].  
The purpose of this study was to analyze the contribution of dental health care costs and oral hygiene to health care costs and to predict health care costs by statistical modeling. Predictive models can lead to the promotion of treatment for dental diseases to prevent systemic diseases, which ultimately leads to preventing an increase in health care costs.