23rd American World Dentistry Congress

Abstract: Dental caries is the most common chronic infectious disease in children affecting both sexes. It is multifactorial in origin that is influenced by biomedical factors (diet, microorganism, and tooth) and the social determinants of health. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the association between dental caries and gender, body mass index (BMI), and socioeconomic status (SES) in Saudi children aged 2-12-year-old seen in Jeddah Speciality Dental Center.

 

Method: The study included 59 caries-free children and 118 children with caries experience. Personal data and family SES were assessed by a questionnaire. Children were examined for caries according to WHO criteria. Based on the age and sex-specific Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 2000 growth charts, the weight status of the children were categorized by the BMI percentile into 4 groups: underweight (< 5th percentile), normal weight (5th to < 85th percentile), overweight (85th to < 95th percentile), and obese (≥ 95th percentile). BMI percentile values for the children was generated using a web-based the calculator on a CDC website (http://apps.nccd.cdc.gov/dnpabmi/Calculator.aspx)5.

 

Results: Of 177 participated children, 47% (n=84) were males. The mean age of children was 5.8 years. Chi-square test showed that there is no association between caries status and gender and BMI groups, p-value = 0.74 and 0.87, respectively. However, the significant association between dental caries and lower family monthly income was observed with p-value < 0.001. Additionally, caries experience was also associated with the lower parental educational level (p-value ≤ 0.001).

 

Conclusion: No significant associations of dental caries were found with gender and all 4 categories of BMI for the selected age in this study sample. Pairwise comparison showed the negative association between dental caries and SES. Moreover, significantly less number of children with caries was observed for highly educated mothers