Abstract
BackgroundDental caries in primary teeth is a serious oral health concern among children. It can lead to detrimental impacts on a child’s growth, development, and quality of life. Therefore, this cross-sectional study aimed to examine the prevalence of dental caries and its associations with nutritional status, sugar and second-hand smoke exposure among pre-schoolers.MethodsA total of 26 pre-schools in Seremban, Malaysia were randomly selected using the probability proportional to size sampling. Dental examination was performed by a dentist to record the number of decayed teeth (dt). Weight and height of the pre-schoolers were measured. The mother-administered questionnaire was used to gather information pertaining to the sociodemographic characteristics and second-hand smoke exposure. Total sugar exposure was calculated from a 3-day food record.ResultsAmong the 396 participating pre-schoolers, 63.4% of them had at least one untreated caries, with a mean ± SD dt score of 3.56 ± 4.57. Negative binomial regression analysis revealed that being a boy (adjusted mean ratio = 1.42, 95% CI = 0.005–0.698, p = 0.047), exposed to second-hand smoke (adjusted mean ratio = 1.67, 95% CI = 0.168–0.857, p = 0.004) and those who had more than 6 times of daily total sugar exposure (adjusted mean ratio = 1.93, 95% CI = 0.138–0.857, p = 0.013) were significantly associated with dental caries among pre-schoolers.ConclusionA high prevalence of dental caries was reported in this study. This study highlights the need to reduce exposure to second-hand smoke and practice healthy eating behaviours in reducing the risk of dental caries among pre-schoolers.
Highlights
Dental caries in primary teeth is a serious oral health concern among children
A total of 396 mother-child dyad participated in this study with the majority of the pre-schoolers were boys (50.5%), Malay (77.5%), and 5 years of age (50.5%)
The present study found that height-for-age z score (HAZ), weight-for-age z score (WAZ) or BMI-for-age z score (BAZ), was not associated with untreated caries in the primary teeth
Summary
It can lead to detrimental impacts on a child’s growth, development, and quality of life This cross-sectional study aimed to examine the prevalence of dental caries and its associations with nutritional status, sugar and secondhand smoke exposure among pre-schoolers. Dental caries in primary teeth is a serious oral health concern in children. It is one of the most common noncommunicable diseases in children worldwide, which is usually untreated [1]. There was a notable decrease in the prevalence of dental caries, from 87.1% in 1995 to 76.2% in 2005 among 5-year-old Malaysian children, the dft index (number of decayed and filled primary teeth) did not change much throughout the years from 5.8 in 1995 to 5.5 in 2005 [4].
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