Prediction of Primary and Permanent Dental Caries Using Age and Body Mass Index

Abstract

Dental caries is a biofilm-mediated, sugar-driven, multifactorial, dynamic disease that results in the phasic demineralization and re-mineralization of dental hard tissues, population of several countries is suffering from this problem, children and adults both are found at risk with this disease. Literature gives the evidence that dental caries are associated with age, primary caries found more prevalent at early age group and permanent caries found more prevalent at older age group, whereas some of the studies did not give any significant association between dental caries and body mass index. This study was aimed to see the relationship of primary and permanent caries with age and body mass index, and developing a regression model for caries prediction, In the current study a part of a secondary baseline data for dental caries project of Pakistani children was used, STATA 12.0 MP was used to estimate multiple regression models for primary and permanent dental caries prediction using and age in years and body mass index as predictor variables. results showed, primary DMFT gives 27.2% negative correlation with age, permanent DMFT gives 23.8% positive correlation with age and 22.5% positive correlation with body mass index, This study concludes that increase in age and body mass index could less the chances of primary caries but increase the chances of permanent caries in the population.