Sugar consumption and changes in dental caries from childhood to adolescence

A selection of abstracts of clinically relevant papers from other journals. The abstracts on this page have been chosen and edited by John R. Radford. The papers summarised in this issue of the BDJ have been selected from those ten most read published during 2016 in J Dent Res (Impact Factor 4.062 and ranked second in dentistry). Most of these papers explore the oral sciences. Those included in this section, have an increased focus on the practice of dentistry (one paper has been previously summarised in the Br Dent J – DOI: 10.1038/sj.bdj.2016.598).

Abstract

Despite the water being fluoridated, there was still an association between those who consumed only low levels of sucrose and dental caries.

Main

Peres MA, Sheiham A et al. J Dent Res 2016; 95: 388–394

WHO (2015) concluded that the evidence for an association between sugar intake and dental caries is of only moderate quality. Remarkably there has been 'no prospective cohort study from early childhood to young adulthood' exploring this issue. This prospective population-based birth cohort study carried out in Brazil, showed a relationship between sugar consumption and dental caries; after adjusting for confounders, dental caries increment ratio was 20% higher when the subjects were 6 years old and 66% higher when 18 years old in those who consumed high levels of sugar compared with those who consumed low levels of sucrose. As shown in the seminal Dunedin cohort study, caries occurred at a relatively constant rate over the period of the study.