Systematic review suggests a relationship between moderate to late preterm birth and early childhood caries

Abstract

Aim: The aim was to examine the association between moderate to late preterm birth and the prevalence of early childhood caries. Methods: We searched the PubMed, Scopus, Cochrane Trials Register databases up to February 28, 2020. Two independent reviewers screened the papers for relevance, extracted data and assessed the risk of bias. A random-effects meta-analysis was performed to pool the prevalence of early childhood caries by gestational age. Results: The authors identified 14 studies covering 210,691 children. They were published from 2007-2020 and included birth cohorts, cross-sectional, register-based and case-control studies. We assessed eight of them as having low or moderate risk of bias. The median caries prevalence was 48.8% among children born moderate to late preterm compared to 20.5% for those born full term. The pooled overall odds ratio was 1.48 (95% confidence interval 1.16-1.89; P < .001). The certainty of this finding was low due to heterogeneity and inconsistencies across the studies. Conclusion: This systematic review and meta-analysis displayed a significantly higher prevalence of early childhood caries in children born moderate to late preterm compared to full term children. The finding suggests that the gestational age should be collected as a risk factor in the paediatric dental records. K E Y W O R D S caries, meta-analysis, preterm birth, risk factor, teeth This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

Multimodal Data Integration Reveals Mode of Delivery and Snack Consumption Outrank Salivary Microbiome in Association With Caries Outcome in Thai Children

“…Vaginal-born children are 2.27 times more likely to experience ECC compared to their counterparts. These findings are consistent with those evidenced in earlier studies ( Pattanaporn et al., 2013 ; Twetman et al., 2020 ). What is not yet clear is how those plausible caries-associated risk factors impact on oral microbial composition in 2- to 3-year-old children.…”

Do preterm-born children and adolescents have greater need for dental care as compared to full term-born controls?

“…We found no significant difference in caries prevalence between preterm– and full term–born children, as showed by many others [ 6 , 8 – 11 ]. However, other studies showed the contrary [ 12 , 13 ]. It is important to consider though, that the dental caries indexes used in this study, were calculated in Sweden without evaluating missing teeth.…”

“…During the preschool and school years, it has been shown that preterm-born patients had more DBMP during dental examinations and treatment than children born full term [6,7], as well as a higher number of missed appointments during the preschool years [6]. Nevertheless, some studies have shown that preterm-born children did not have a higher risk of developing caries lesions than full term-born children [6,[8][9][10][11] while others have shown the opposite [12,13]. Other reported oral health problems in preterm-born children (especially in extremely preterm-and very preterm-born children) include disturbances in tooth development, such as smaller teeth, delay in tooth maturation, and more enamel defects compared with full term-born children.…”

Highlights in this issue

“…A systematic review and meta‐analysis by Tweetman et al 7 found a significantly higher prevalence of early childhood caries in children born moderate to late preterm than full term. The authors identified 14 studies of 210 691 children, published from 2007 to 2020.…”