Prevalence of Obesity in Elementary School Children and its Association with Dental Caries.

PURPOSE: To determine any associations between obesity and caries activity in the mixed dentition stage among primary school children in a low-income Mexican primary school. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This cross-sectional study was performed in Mexican schoolchildren aged 8-12 years. The body mass index (BMI) was obtained, and children were classified as overweight/obese considering age and sex. The experience of caries in permanent and temporary dentition was established with the sum of decayed/missing/filled teeth (DMFT or deft index for permanent or temporal dentition); a caries index for all teeth was also considered (total decay [TD]). Mann-Whitney U-test was used to contrast the distribution between sexes of the quantitative variables and to contrast the distribution of each variable per category, the Kruskal-Wallis test was used. Spearman's Rho test was used to establish the correlation between the quantitative variables. Multiple linear regression models were performed to find the relationship between the O'Leary index and the BMI. A Multilayer Perceptron was constructed as follows: (a) dependent variables: deft, DMFT, TD and O'Leary index; (b) factor: BMI; (c) covariable: age. RESULTS: A total of 331 children were included in the study. Dental caries prevalence was 32.4% (95% CI 29.7-35.2), while the mean DMFT was 0.64 (± SD 1.00). Through the Spearmen test, a statistically significant negative correlation was found between BMI-for-age with the total experience of carious lesions (r = -0.127, p = 0.021) and with experience of carious lesions in the deciduous dentition (deft) (r = -0.195, p ≤0.001). But when using the linear and logistic regression models to analyse the relationship with the O'Leary index, BMI was not statistically significant. With the Multilayer Perceptron there appears to be less error in the prediction of deft than the other indexes. CONCLUSIONS: This study confirms the high prevalence of obesity in primary school children. It also shows the scarce association between carious lesions and obesity.

sRANKL and its correlation with metabolic syndrome parameters in children.

BACKGROUND: Activating receptor ligand for nuclear factor (RANKL) has been identified as a ligand attached to the cell membrane of osteoblasts and odontoclasts. AIM: To determine a possible association of sRANKL in saliva and serum with the parameters of metabolic syndrome (MS) in paediatric population aged 8-12 years. DESIGN: This was a clinical, analytical and comparative study. Students between 6 and 12 years with good oral hygiene were included. Anthropometry, clinical analysis, dentobacterial plaque registration were registered as well as sRANKL in total saliva and serum through the ELISA technique. RESULTS: A total of 43 children were enrolled, with a mean age of 9.7 (±0.8 years). Contrasting the groups by the presence or absence of the waist circumference above the normal limit, the difference in serum sRANKL concentration was statistically significant (P ≤ 0.05). A negative statistical significance was found in the correlation between serum sRANKL and HDLc (r2  = -0.310, P = 0.046). Saliva sRANKL did not show statistical difference between neither gender nor body mass index and was not correlated with any parameter of the MS. CONCLUSIONS: A good oral hygiene seems to avoid the effects of MS on the oral cavity.