Dental Caries and Salivary Immunoglobulin A in Down Syndrome

Abstract

Down syndrome (DS) is defined as trisomy chromosome 21, which is observed to be the most prevalent autosomal genetic anomaly. Salivary immunoglobulin A (sIgA) plays an important role in defence mechanism against the microbial pathogens that can invade the surface of mucosa. In children with DS, raised sIgA levels cause an increase in immune mechanism against dental caries. The evidence about the salivary IgA levels in children suffering from Down syndrome is contradictory and limited in the literature. Thus, there is a terrible requirement to conduct more longitudinal prospective studies on saliva of DS patients taking large sample sizes to assess the molecular interactions. The present review is aimed to evaluate the association of Dental caries and salivary immunoglobulin A in Down syndrome individuals. The sources were searched from a database of PubMed from 2004 to 2023 (last 19 years). The inclusion criteria included key words of microdontia, delayed eruption, dental anomalies, retained teeth, anodontia, fissured lip and tongue, macroglossia, hypodontia in Down syndrome. The 22 articles that met the selection criteria (most of them were review article and some observational studies) were included to this review, of which some of the studies have been conducted to assess the role of sIgA in relation to dental caries and observed that increased sIgA levels decrease the rate of incidence of dental caries. The present review revealed that patients suffering with Down syndrome are at an increased risk of dental caries because of impaired motor activities, malocclusion and affected quality of life.