Caries aging association

A further data set, which also confirms the caries-calculus association, is shown in table 4. These results are from a study of children, initially aged 8 years, conducted on the Isle of Lewis [14] that comprised a 3-year clinical trial followed by another clinical examination 3 years later. The 6-year caries increments are lower for children who exhibited calculus at some time during the study than for those who were always calculus-free. This tendency was found both for children who had used a 2500-ppm F dentifrice during the clinical trial and those who had used a non-fluoridated control dentifrice. 

Fluorine is available to humans, plants and animals mainly in the form of fluoride ion (F ). Body fluoride status depends on numerous factors, including the total amount of fluoride ingested daily, its bioavailability and metabolism. The adequate intake (Al) of fluoride from all sources is set by the Standing Committee on the Scientific Evaluation of the Dietary Reference Intakes at 0.05 mg/day/kg body weight this intake is recommended for all ages above 6 months, because it confers a high level of protection against dental caries and is not associated with any known unwanted health effects [8]. 

Is Aruttas is the only coastal site tested. Skeletal materials were recovered in a cave a few hundred meters from the shore, located in a marshy and sandy area on the central-west coast of Sardinia. The stratigraphic context was disrupted by looters, and potteiy sherds found associated were attributed to the final phase of the Late Neolithic. One radiocarbon date, though, shifted the chronology to the Middle Bronze Age (1600-1300 B.C.). From the physical fitness and low caries of the recovered human remains, a well balanced diet has been inferred (43, 50, 51). 

Clinical problems associated with reduced salivary flow include difficulty chewing foods, reduced denture retention, recurrent caries, root surface caries, and oral candidiasis (low grade). When any of these conditions are found in a patient, regardless of age, reduced salivary flow should be considered in a differential diagnosis of the problem. 

Few papers that mention a possible association between calculus and caries have been reported since that time. In the most focused of these, Manji et al. [23] presented data from an oral health study involving 1131 Kenyans aged 15-65 years. By dividing the subjects into narrow age bands, these authors were able to demonstrate an inverse, but weak, association between calculus and caries. They concluded that the correlation was not strong enough to be of clinical significance. Of five further relevant studies [24-29], an inverse association between calculus and caries was reported in three [24,26,27], In each case, the correlations were weaker than those reported in section 1.2.1. 

The clinical evidence presented in section 1.2 unequivocally supports an inverse association between calculus and caries experience for subjects of similar age. There are many possible reasons for this finding. In section 1.4 a variety of saliva and plaque factors were discussed which have been shown to influence mineralisation processes in vitro or to have the potential to influence such processes. A number of studies have sought correlations between particular factors and either calculus or caries almost none involved both. 

A recent study by Ayad et al. [101] indicated a qualitative association between basic PRPs and caries different peptides were found in the parotid saliva of 9 caries-free adults, who were life-long residents of Rochester NY prior to water-fluoridation, compared to those found in 9 subjects of similar age with high caries. The authors suggested that proteolytic processing of parotid salivary proteins differs between such groups. 

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