Association between Low blood lead levels and increased risk of dental caries in children: a cross-sectional study

BMC Oral Health

Research Article

Young-Suk Kim¹  Hae-Young Kim²  Youn-Hee Choi³  Mina Ha⁴  Ho-Jang Kwon⁴ 

[1] Department of Dental Hygiene, U1 University, Yeongdong, Korea;Department of Health Policy and Management, College of Health Science, and Department of Health Science, Graduate School, Korea University, Seoul, Korea;Department of Preventive Dentistry, School of Dentistry, Kyungpook National University, Daegu, Korea;Department of Preventive Medicine, Dankook University College of Medicine, 119 Dandae-ro, Dongnam-gu, 31116, Cheonan, Chungnam, Republic of Korea;

关键词: Blood lead;    Children;    Dental caries;    Deciduous dentition;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12903-017-0335-z

 received in 2016-08-05, accepted in 2017-01-06,  发布年份 2017

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe objective of this study was to examine the association between low blood lead levels of <5 μg/dL and the development of dental caries among children.MethodsThe Children’s Health and Environment Research (CHEER) group recruited a cohort of 7,059 school-aged children from six Korean cities. The final study populations in the permanent and deciduous teeth groups were 1,564 and 1,241 children, respectively, after excluding 4 children with blood lead levels of >5 μg/dL. Compared with the children who did not have dental caries, the risk of having dental caries according to blood lead level was estimated by using the zero-inflated negative binomial model.ResultsThe geometric mean (geometric standard deviation, maximum) blood lead level was 1.53 μg/dL (1.57, 4.89 μg/dL), and 74.4% of children had a level of <2 μg/dL. Blood lead level was significantly higher in the children with than in those without deciduous dental caries (1.59 vs. 1.51 μg/dL), similarly with permanent dental caries (1.65 vs. 1.51 μg/dL). After adjustment for covariates, deciduous teeth surfaces that were decayed and filled increased significantly with increasing blood lead levels in a dose-dependent manner (prevalence ratio, 1.14; 95% confidence interval: 1.02–1.27). However, the risk of having dental caries in permanent teeth was not linearly associated with the increase in blood lead level.ConclusionsIn the sum of decayed and filled surfaces, we found a significant increase in risk of dental caries of the deciduous teeth with an increase in blood lead levels (<5 μg/dL) but found no statistical significance in the association with decayed and filled surfaces of caries separately.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© The Author(s). 2017