Could precocious puberty increase the risk of dental caries

Background and Objective: Precocious puberty (Pre P) is a rare systemic disease that mostly affects girls. The complications of the curing drugs, including obesity and mouth dryness are potentially risk factors for dental decay. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate and compare the dental status and caries rate of girls with Pre P with their healthy peers.Materials and Methods: In this comparative cross-sectional study, a sample of 60 girls diagnosed with Pre P for at least one year and a group of 61 healthy girls matched one-by-one based on their age and parental education were recruited from the children in a pediatric hospital. Oral examination and oral hygiene behavior were performed. The number of decayed, filled and missed teeth as a result of dental decay (DMFT) and the status of mouth dryness were recorded in the information data sheets. The data were fed into SPSS and analyzed. The level of significance was set at 0.05.Finding: a significant percentage of participants (40.8%) have not referred to a dentist for more than a year, and the frequency of dental visit for examination was higher in the children with Pre P. In primary teeth, the dmft and fT were significantly higher in the healthy children, but in permanent teeth, no significant difference was found between the two groups in the DMFT and its components. The comparison of oral dryness based on clinical examinations revealed a significant difference (16.7% salivary deficiency in Pre P compared to 0% in the healthy group, Q2= 10.9, p = 0.001). The frequency of dryness feeling was also reported more frequently in the children with Pre P (3.28% of oral dryness in the patients with Pre P compared to 7.16% in the healthy children).Conclusion: The effective supervision of parents and more preventive dental visits in the children with Pre P might be the main factors involved in controlling dental caries in children with Pre P.

Keywords:

precocious puberty , risk factor , dental cari