Are Maternal Factors Predictors for Early Childhood Caries? Results from a Cohort in Southern Brazil

Abstract

This study aimed to determine the influence of maternal factors on the early development of dental caries in Brazilian preschoolers. This cross-sectional study was nested in a cohort of adolescent mothers. The current wave was performed when the children were aged 24 to 42 months. The questionnaire-based survey targeted adolescent mothers and included demographic and socioeconomic variables as well as the maternal education level. In addition, clinical examinations were performed on the mothers and their children. Mothers were assessed for decayed, missing and filled teeth in the permanent dentition (DMFT index) and gingival assessment; their children were assessed for decayed, missing and filled teeth in the deciduous dentition (dmft index). Poisson regression with robust variance was used to estimate the prevalence ratio, risk ratio and 95% confidence intervals. This data was also used to identify the maternal risk factors associated with the outcomes (prevalence and severity of childhood caries). A total 538 mother-child dyads were evaluated; the prevalence of early childhood caries was 15.1% and maternal caries was 74.4%. After the adjustment, the children that exhibited a greater incidence of dental caries were from mothers of low socioeconomic status, or from those presenting decayed teeth and higher rates of gingival bleeding. The results of this study suggest that the oral health of mothers is a potentially important risk factor for the development of early childhood dental caries. Public health planners should consider this information when planning interventions in order to prevent the occurrence of early dental caries.

Socio-Economic Status May Associate Different Risk(s) with Early Childhood Caries (ECC) That Can Cause the Development of Psychomotor Deficiency in Preschool Children Aged 3–6 Years Old: The Results of Preliminary Analysis from a Cohort Study

“…Interestingly, the results of present analyses confirm, for the first time, that there is indeed a causal relationship between ECC and psychomotor deficiency in growing children aged 3-6 years old, based on the recruited preschoolers that were measured twice and analyzed over time in the study. It is worth noting that maternal education and occupation, but not paternal metrics, were significantly associated with the gross motor and personal-social CCDI aspects (Table 2), a finding consistent with most of the reported results, emphasizing the critical maternal influence under the content-gradients of SES on ECC for oral health conditions evaluated [17,18,23,24].…”

“…Modern research on caries has indicated that the non-dental risks of ECC may include a low level of SES, other vulnerable sub-populations with disparities, and/or certain minority ethnical vs. racial groups, etc. [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]. Therefore, there is an urgent need to identify the critical risks of ECC and also target the high-risk sub-populations on prevention and effective protocols for subsequent proper treatments vs. managements.…”

“…However, additional risks suggested for ECC may include biofilmassociated microbial species, improper feeding, dietary or food practices, ethnicity/race, poverty-income classes, environmental/salivary vs. self-image attributes, and maternal psychosocial (i.e., sense of coherence) distress or parental stresses, etc. [15,[17][18][19][20][21]24,25].…”

“…Further to studying the different attributes of associations with ECC on the preschoolers' general health, we have been interested in assessing how ECC and related risks may be implicated in psychomotor deficiency, especially comprehension concepts, expressive language, or general developmental scales, etc., which remain unclear to date [10][11][12]24]. Herein, we have aimed to investigate whether ECC, via dmft measured, is causally associated with a child's psychomotor deficiency or not (via CCDI: Chinese Child Development Inventory, modified by Hsu et al [26]), with which a longitudinal cohort study was designed to analyze the 3-6-year-old kindergarteners randomly selected and recruited from central and south regions of Taiwan, as reported previously [10][11][12].…”

Association of maternal oral health with early childhood caries among rural areas of Punjab

“…7 Similar research investigation conducted by Pinto et al suggested that dmfs score of children between the age of 2 years to 3. 5 years -------------------------------------------------------------------------------Received on 17-02-2021 Accepted on 27-06-2021 was linked with the prevalence of caries among mothers but gingival bleeding in mothers was not linked with dmfs score of child 8 . Prevalence of dental caries in children between the age of 11-12 years was positively associated to the maternal caries experience 9 , even if, in past year, the mothers have any active decay 10 .…”