Logistic regression analysis of oral health data in assessing the therapeutic value of amine fluoride containing products

Aims. One aim of the study was to evaluate the impact of using logistic regression in oral health research and to evaluate the effects of amine fluoride (AmF) products in remineralization, statistically. Methods. The longitudinal clinical study evaluated the effect of combined use of AmF toothpaste and gel (test group 1) versus using AmF toothpaste and placebo gel (test group 2), and material containing no AmF at all (control group). Reversal of white spot lesions was examined using logistic regression. Results. The use of AmF toothpaste combined with AmF gel reduced the number of incipient lesions significantly (p<0.001) compared to the group using no AmF products. Test group 1 had 2.3 times higher chance of remineralization of incipient lesions than test group 2 (p = 0.03), and 11.1 times higher chance (p 0.001), than the control group. The significant odds ratio showed that the combined use of AmF gel and toothpaste was more effective in remineralizing incipient lesions. Conclusions. Logistic regression can be used to predict a dependent variable on the basis of independent variable and to determine the proportion of variance in the dependent variable explained by the independent variables, to rank the relative importance of independent variable, to assess interaction effects and to understand the impact of covariate control variables. This method could detect the beneficial effects of AmF products not only clinically but also statistically.