The Relationship between Oral Candidiasis and Early Childhood Caries

Early childhood caries is a serious infectious disease that frequently requires expensive and extensive intervention. Identifying those individuals at the highest risk either prior to or shortly after the beginning of teeth eruption is imperative to allow for possible preventive intervention. In recent years, it has been suggested that the abundance of C. Albicans at infancy would be a good predictor for future severity of caries. Objectives: this study was to examine the risk of dental caries in children who had oral Candidiasis during early childhood. Methods: the charts of 631 children who visited both the Pediatric Dental Center and the Primary Care Center at Yale-New Haven Hospital were reviewed retrospectively. Children were divided by a positive (n=142) or negative history of candidiasis (n= 489) in the first 9 months of life. The index values for both primary and permanent decayed, extracted/missing, filled teeth (low caries deft=1-5, moderate caries deft=6-10, high caries deft>11) were evaluated for children who had history of oral Candidiasis and statistically compared to those of control who were Candidiasis-free using Mantel-Haenszel Chi-Square Test. Results: we found that children who had oral Candidiasis during early childhood were in the moderate caries and high caries subgroup (30.3% and 25.4%) compared to control patients (28.4% and 15.3% respectively) in their primary dentition. The difference between these two groups is statistically significant (P<0.05). No changes were seen in permanent teeth. However the patients in our study were all under 10 years of age. Conclusion: Our study suggests that children who had oral Candidiasis during early childhood had higher risk of developing severe early childhood caries. Early patient education and preventive intervention should be emphasized in this patient group with history of oral Candidiasis.