DMFT and Food Security in Children, NHANES 2013-2014

Objectives: To determine if an association exists between decayed, missing and filled teeth in children with reported food security status.
Methods: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 2013-2014 data were used in this retrospective, cross-sectional study. Inclusion criteria were that a parent/guardian provided information about the child’s age, sex, race/ethnicity, insurance status, birth weight, history of dental visit, history of having ever been breastfed, mother’s age when the child was born, if the mother smoked during pregnancy, and if the child had completed an oral examination with the NHANES dental examiner (a licensed dentist). Decayed, missing, and filled teeth (dmft) were determined from the data provided by the NHANES dental examiner.

Results: Of the 1,154 NHANES participants who were ages 12 months to 72 months in the study, 1,081 were included in the sample. Nearly half were female (49.0%), non-Hispanic white (49.6%), and had a poor/low family household income (53.0%). There were 38.7% who were ages 48-72 months. 20.1% had dmft. Most had birthweights above 2500g (93.0%), had mothers ages 20-35 years (72.4%), had been breastfed (78.3%), had mothers who did not smoke (91.6%), had insurance (94.3%), had more than 10% of their calories from sugar (77.3%), and had full food security (88.0%)
In crude bivariate analyses, race/ethnicity, age, having had a dental visit within the previous year and food security had significant associations with dmft. In unadjusted logistic regression analysis, food security was associated with dfmt. However, the relationship failed to reach significance in adjusted analysis.
Conclusions: Although dmft in children ages 12 months to 72 months was 20.1% in the United States, food security as a factor failed to reach significance in adjusted analyses.