Caries
Ali Baghalian, Dr.
Resident of Pediatric Dentistry
Rutgers School of Dental Medicine, Newark, NJ
Rutgers School of Dental Medicine
Newark, New Jersey, United States
Akbar Shafiee, MD
Faculty of Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences
Jorge Caceda, Professor
Professor
Rutgers School of Dental Medicine
Newark, New Jersey, United States
Richard Rosivack, DMD
Chair, Department of Pediatric Dentistry
RSDM Pediatric Dentistry
Newark, New Jersey, United States
Purpose: The aim of this systematic review is to investigate the relationship between early childhood caries (ECC) and the culprit genes.
Methods: Systematic screening of electronic English sources, PubMed and Scopus was carried out. The inclusion criteria included observational and gene polymorphisms (GP) studies associated with ECC in children younger than 7 years of age. Two authors independently assessed the titles and abstracts of the studies that satisfied the inclusion criteria, then the full-texts were retrieved to extract the data. The risk of bias was assessed using Strobe guideline. We finally reported The descriptive synthesis, the odds ratio and relative risk as the measure of association were included in the analysis.
Results: The primary search with predefined keywords included 1338 references. After the first screening, a total of 21 studies were selected. Seven studies failed to find any association between GP with ECC. In the remaining papers, ENAM (6 papers) MMP (5 papers) was the most commonly reported polymorphism . Due to the variability of the detected genes in the studies, a meta-analysis of the results was not possible.
Conclusion: Several type of GP have been reported to be associated with ECC, however due to the diversity of GP there is not a clear association between ECC and the type of GP.