Abstract
This study aimed to investigate the association between oral disease burden and oral health related quality of life (OHRQoL) among overweight/obese (OW/OB) and normal weight (NW) Malaysian adolescents. A total of 397 adolescents were involved in the two-year prospective observational cohort study. OHRQOL was measured through a self-administered questionnaire containing the short version of the Malaysian Oral Health Impact Profile (OHIP[M]). Body mass index (BMI) was used for anthropometric measurement. Whilst, decayed, missing, and filled teeth (DMFT) index, Significant Caries Index (SiC), simplified basic periodontal examination (S-BPE), and gingival bleeding index (GBI) were used for clinical assessment tools. Higher dental caries prevalence was observed in the NW group while higher SiC was reported in the OW/OB group. Regardless of the obesity status, the prevalence of gingivitis (BPE code 1 and 2) was high in this study. A reduction of GBI prevalence was observed in the two-year follow-up results with an increased prevalence of OHRQoL impact in the OW/OB group compared to the NW group (p > 0.05). The findings from this study suggested that obesity status did not have influence over the burden of oral diseases and OHRQoL. It offers insights referring to the changes in adolescents’ oral diseases burden and OHRQoL.
Highlights
Overweight and obesity are defined as abnormal or excessive fat accumulation in the body, which can impact one’s health [1]
The sociodemographic and anthropometric characteristics of the follow-up participants were comparable to the dropout participants (Cohen’s effect size ≤ 0.5) (Table 1)
The final analysis of this study involved the total number of those who participated at both baseline and follow-up study
Summary
Overweight and obesity are defined as abnormal or excessive fat accumulation in the body, which can impact one’s health [1]. Over 340 million children and adolescents aged five to nineteen were either overweight or obese in 2016 [1]. The Malaysian National and Health Morbidity Survey (NHMS) reported that 29.8 percent of adolescents (aged 13–17 years old) were overweight/obese (OW/OB). This is a situation that we cannot afford to neglect as 40 percent of the current Malaysian demographic profile range from 0 to 24 years of age. Research showed obesity is likely to progress from adolescence to adulthood [4]. This is rather a worrying phenomenon as it will potentially impair general and oral health in both adolescence and adulthood. The puberty hormonal interaction alters the body composition and regional distribution of body fat in adolescents
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