Relationship between Obesity and Caries in Children Ages 1 – 6

Objectives: To evaluate the relationship between dental caries and obesity in children ages 1 – 6 years in one Chicago academic pediatric dental clinic. The hypothesis tested was that patients with higher body mass index (BMI) will have a higher caries rate than children with lower BMI.

Methods: Children ages 1 – 6 years who attended one Chicago academic pediatric dental clinic were recruited into this study after meeting study's inclusion criteria for age, gender and medical status. Out of the 101 subjects approached and consented, 96 were included in the study. All subjects received a clinical oral examination using a mirror and explorer; dmft was recorded according to the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines. No radiographs were taken. In addition, their heights and weights were recorded. All information was entered into an Excel Spreadsheet and then imported into SPSS for analysis. The height and weight were then used to calculate the BMI as defined by the CDC as: BMI = 703x weight (pounds)/height (inches)². The linear association between the variables, dmft/age, dmft, BMI and BMI-for-age percentiles was evaluated using Pearson's correlation coefficient.

Results: The distribution of subjects in regard to BMI-for-age percentile by age, for each year of age, showed that the sample was disproportionately overweight, and disproportionately distributed between BMI percentile and age. The results indicated a lack of relationship between caries rate and BMI in different categories of age ranging between 2 – 6 years old in our population. There were only five children that were under 24 months of age and were discarded from the data analysis. There was no correlation between dmft and any of the following variables: dmft by age, height and weight with BMI and BMI percentile by age.

Conclusions: According to the results of this study there was no relationship between caries and weight in children ages 2 – 6 years. Future studies need to address some of the limitations of this study by controlling for fluoride exposure, diet and oral hygiene in a larger and more uniform sample size.