Half-century of Dental Public Health research: bibliometric analysis of world scientific trends.

OBJECTIVES: To describe the characteristics of Dental Public Health (DPH) scientific publications within core DPH journals over time and to compare DPH journals with DPH content from other journal types. METHODS: The Scopus database was used to identify DPH-relevant articles published from 1965 to 2014 in three core DPH journals (DPHJs) and from 2005 to 2014 in Dental Journals (DJs), Public Health (PHJs) and General Journals (GJs). To identify DPH-relevant articles, a search strategy with words about oral health and public health was applied to each group of journals. Research themes were created by grouping similar keywords to report changes in the focus of articles over time. The most productive journals, countries, institutions and authors were also estimated for each set of journals. RESULTS: In 2005-2014, 60 297 articles were identified, of which 2.7% in DPHJs, 10.4% from PHJs, 38.2% from GJs and 48.7% from DJs. DPH-relevant articles published in the core DPHJs, DJs and PHJs tended to share a strong emphasis on dental caries, healthcare/services research on children and adolescents. Over time, the focus in the DPHJs has increased towards health behaviour/promotion/education, quality of life and socioeconomic factors. In the last decade, those themes were more frequent in DPH journals than in the other groups. CONCLUSIONS: DPH research published in DPHJs had some unique features and greater focus on the themes of quality of life, socioeconomic factors and health behaviour/education/promotion than other groups of journals.

Challenges in comparing the methods and findings of cohort studies of oral health: the Dunedin (New Zealand) and Pelotas (Brazil) studies.

OBJECTIVE: to systematically compare methods and some findings from two prospective cohort studies of oral health. METHODS: This paper describes and compares two such population-based birth cohort studies of younger adults: the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study (conducted in New Zealand); and the 1982 Pelotas Birth Cohort Study (conducted in Brazil). RESULTS: The two cohorts showed socio-demographic similarities and differences, with their gender mixes being similar, but their ethnic compositions differing markedly. There were some important similarities and differences in methods. Overall dental caries experience was higher among the Dunedin cohort. Each of the studies has examined the association between childhood-adulthood changes in socio-economic status and oral health in the mid-20s. Both studies observed the greatest disease experience among those who were of low SES in both childhood and adulthood, and the least among those who were of high SES in both childhood and adulthood. In each cohort, disease experience in the upwardly mobile and downwardly mobile groups lay between those two extremes. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: There are important similarities and differences in both methods and findings. While the need for a degree of methodological convergence in future is noted, the two studies are able to use each other as replicate samples for research into chronic oral conditions.

The influence of family income trajectories from birth to adulthood on adult oral health: findings from the 1982 Pelotas birth cohort.

OBJECTIVES: We assessed whether 3 models of life course socioeconomic status (critical period, accumulation of risk, and social mobility) predicted unsound teeth in adulthood among a Brazilian cohort. METHODS: Life course data were collected on the 5914 live-born infants in the 1982 Pelotas Birth Cohort study. Participants' oral health was assessed at 15 (n = 888) and 24 (n = 720) years of age. We assessed family income trajectories and number of episodes of poverty in the life course through Poisson regressions, yielding unadjusted and adjusted prevalence ratios for number of unsound teeth at age 24 years. RESULTS: The adjusted prevalence ratio for participants born into poverty was 30% higher than for those who were not. Participants who were always poor had the highest prevalence of unsound teeth; those who were downwardly or upwardly mobile also had more unsound teeth than did other participants, after adjustment for confounders. More episodes of poverty were associated with greater prevalence of unsound teeth in adulthood. CONCLUSIONS: Poverty at birth and during the life course was correlated with the number of unsound teeth at 24 years of age.