Samenvatting

Poor mastication has been widely associated with cognitive impairments in elderly people. Ultrasound technology (US) and bite force measuring devices are both used to assess the masticatory muscles, providing an indication of their condition.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to assess masseter muscle transversal thickness and the magnitude of maximal bite force (MBF) in a group of healthy young adults.

Design: Participants in the study consisted of 126 individuals (67 females and 59 males; aged 25.1±4.8 years) without any jaw disorder. MBF was determined with a transducer placed in between incisors and the transversal thickness of the masseter muscle was evaluated bilaterally for both relaxed and contracted state of the masseter muscle by using ultrasound (US) technology. The contracted state of the muscle was achieved by asking the participants to forcefully clench on their molars. The normality of distribution of all the data was assessed by Shapiro-wilk test. A comparison of the mean of three MBF measurements and three US measurements of the contracted masseter muscle was made using the Pearson correlation analysis. Since the population was heterogeneous, inter-gender difference was determined for both methods.

Results: There was no difference between left and right masseter muscle thickness, but significant was the difference between contracted and relaxed state of the muscle. Furthermore, significant difference was observed for both MBF and US outcome measures between men and women. Muscle thickness was poorly correlated to MBF r= .3, P< .05. When the relation between US and MBF measurements was analyzed with intra-gender discrimination the analysis would still show a very weak correlation.