Dental caries is a chronic disease which can affect us at any age. The term "caries" denotes both the disease process and its consequences, that is, the damage caused by the disease process. Dental caries has a multifactorial aetiology in which there is interplay of three principal factors: the host (saliva and teeth), the microflora (plaque), and the substrate (diet), and a fourth factor: time...

Despite recent successes in the control of dental caries, the mechanism of caries development remains unclear. To investigate the causes of dental decay, especially in early childhood caries, the supragingival microflora composition of 20 twins with discordant caries phenotypes were analyzed using high-throughput pyrosequencing. In addition, the parents completed a lifestyle questionnaire. A to...

BACKGROUND The Public Dental Service of Västerbotten County (Sweden) recommends using population-based prevention strategies combined with an individual strategy for high-risk patients to manage caries. To facilitate this management strategy, all patients are evaluated for their risk of developing caries in the coming year using defined criteria. Using caries risk scoring over a seven-year peri...

PURPOSE Few studies have been conducted to investigate the effects, if any, of specific medication used to manage the symptoms of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as a risk factor for dental caries. A reported side-effect of the medication is a reduction in saliva. Healthy saliva has been shown to play many important functions in the prevention of dental caries. The focus of this...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the influence of social inequalities of individual and contextual nature on untreated dental caries in Brazilian children. METHODS The data on the prevalence of dental caries were obtained from the Brazilian Oral Health Survey (SBBrasil 2010) Project, an epidemiological survey of oral health with a representative sample for the country and each of the geographical micro-...

The science behind caries prevention and reversal is well understood. A recent clinical trial has confirmed that reducing caries risk results in a reduction in dental decay. Dental caries progression or reversal depends upon the balance between demineralization and remineralization and can be visualized for clinical purposes as the "caries balance." This balance is determined by the relative we...

Two major oral diseases, dental caries and periodontitis, occur at different rates among countries (Petersen, 2003). Dental caries is most widespread in several Asian and Latin American countries but is less common in most African countries. Although developed countries have shown a marked decrease in the prevalence of dental caries in children over the past decades, dental caries is still a ma...

Dental caries is a well known major oral health problem in most countries. The multifactorial etiology of the disease includes multiple bacterial species, S. mutans is the main pathogen associated with the disease. Streptococcus mutans is recognized as the main pathogen of dental caries in human beings. One of the important virulence properties of S. mutans is their ability to form biofi lms on...

The current approach to dental caries focuses on modifying and correcting factors to favor oral health. Caries management by risk assessment (CAMBRA) is an evidence-based approach to preventing or treating dental caries at the earliest stages. Caries protective factors are biologic or therapeutic measures that can be used to prevent or arrest the pathologic challenges posed by the caries risk f...