Association between developmental defects of enamel and early childhood caries in children under 6 years old: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Early childhood caries (ECC) are an oral health problem worldwide in children under 6 years of age. This disease of rapid development has a multifactorial etiology, and one of the possible risk factors is developmental defects of enamel (DDE), such as hypoplasia and opacities. The aim of this systematic review was to evaluate the association between DDE and ECC in children under 6 years of age. An electronic search was conducted until March 2022 using Medline (PubMed), Scopus, Science-Direct, LILACS, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, EBSCO-Host, EMBASE, and Google Scholar and complemented with a manual search, with no restrictions on language or date of publication. Longitudinal studies of children under 6 years of age with primary dentition were included. A total of 1158 studies were found, of which 651 records were reviewed by title and abstract, and 24 articles were selected for full-text evaluation. Finally, nine studies that met the selection criteria were included in the qualitative synthesis. Study quality and certainty were assessed using the Newcastle-Ottawa scale and the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) tool. Three cohort studies of good quality were included in the meta-analysis. A risk associated with DDE (RR = 1.94; 95% CI: 1.52-2.49) and a risk associated with enamel hypoplasia (RR = 5.45; 95% CI: 1.84-16.14) were found. The results for diffuse opacity (RR = 1.21; 95% CI: 0.18-8.15) and demarcated opacity (RR = 1.26; 95% CI: 0.43-3.65) were not significant. GRADE analysis presented low and very low certainty of evidence. It was concluded that there is an association between DDE and ECC. However, the results should be interpreted with caution because of the limitations of the study. The protocol for this study has been registered in PROSPERO under identification number CRD42021238919.

Factores de riesgo de caries en niños pre escolares de la Amazonía peruana

Objetivo: Investigar la influencia de los factores sociodemográficos y las características atribuidas al huésped, sustrato y microorganismos en el riesgo de caries de infancia temprana en niños de 2 a 5 años de una comunidad rural de la Amazonía peruana. Material y métodos: Estudio transversal en 155 niños de 2 a 5 años del distrito de Pichanaki. Se realizó un examen clínico, y cuestionario. Para el análisis de riesgo, se realizaron modelos de regresión logística univariados y multivariados, corregidos mediante el método de Holm-Bonferroni y un bootstrapping con 10000 ciclos de muestreo. Resultados: La prevalencia de caries fue del 83.3%. Los factores asociados a caries dental fueron los antecedentes de infecciones del tracto urinario durante el embarazo (p = 0.005), una higiene bucal pobre (p = 0.001), el compartir cubiertos con su cuidador principal (p = 0.018), y tener hermanos mayores con caries (p = 0.025). El análisis univariado mostró que las infecciones urinarias durante el embarazo, la mala higiene bucal, compartir cubiertos y tener hermanos mayores con caries aumentaron el riesgo de caries. El modelo multivariado mostró que solo la mala higiene bucal (OR: 1.99, 95% CI: 1.34 ­ 2.96, p = 0.001) y la infección urinaria (OR: 2.98, 95% CI: 1.13 ­ 7.81, p = 0.027) se asociaron a un mayor riesgo de caries dental. Conclusión: Las infecciones urinarias durante el embarazo y una higiene bucal inadecuada son factores fuertemente predisponentes para la caries de infancia temprana en niños de 2 a 5 años de una comunidad rural de la Amazonía peruana.