Children’s eating habits when they are 3 years old may influence their dental health at age 6 years, say researchers at the University of Turku, Finland.
Researchers prospectively studied 135 Finnish children at ages 36 months and 72 months. They examined the children’s oral health and dental hygiene and interviewed their parents about the children’s sugar intake and toothbrushing habits. They also analyzed the children’s sucrose consumption using four-day food diaries kept by the parents.
In the April issue of Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology, they reported that the proportion of children with caries experience increased from 16 percent to 40 percent between examinations. They found that the baseline daily sucrose intake of children who developed caries by 6 years of age was higher than that of children who remained caries-free. In addition, children who had candy and juice more than once a week when they were 3 years old consumed more sucrose three years later than did children who had sweets once a week or less at age 3 years.
The total number of children who consumed sweets more than once a week and had visible plaque also increased between examinations. Children who had these combined risks at baseline were more likely to develop carious lesions by age 6 years than were the other children studied.
The authors concluded that dental caries in 6-year-old children is associated with high daily sucrose intake habits that start by age 3 years. They also determined that a combination of consuming sweets more than once a week and having visible plaque at 3 years of age may be predictive of dental health at age 6 years.
