Publication:

Relationship of dental caries and BMI among pre-school children of Bangalore city, India: a cross sectional study

Background Dental caries in young children is commonly untreated representing a public health problem and has also reported to affect their anthropometric outcomes, but the evidence is conflicting.

Objectives The aim of this study was to evaluate the relationship between dental caries and BMI in pre-school children of Bangalore City.

Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted on 208 healthy preschool children with the age range of 3-5 years recruited from nursery schools of Bangalore City. The Anthropometric measurements, weight and height were evaluated by calculating the z-scores using WHO Anthro software to elucidate the subject’s status on the age- and sex-specific growth chart. Every Child who has received two Z-scores under the normal value (<-2) was considered as abnormal (deficient). The data was analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 19. The statistical tests used were t-test and correlation analysis.

Results Dental caries prevalence was 65.7% with a mean dental caries score of 2.24±2.57. Among the study participants 32.7% were underweight (WAZ score), 46.6% had height deficiency (HAZ score) and 47.6% had BMI deficiency (BAZ score). There was significant positive correlation found between dental caries experience and children’s WAZ (Weight for age) [r=0.102, p=0.040] and BAZ (BMI for age) [r= 0.761, p= 0.032].

Conclusions This study showed that lesser percentage of the participants had deficient height, weight and BMI. As the weight and BMI increased there was a significant increase in the number of caries and fillings among the participants.