Sweetness Preferences and Caries detection in Schoolchildren of Hamedan/Iran

Abstract

Objective: Despite the strong relationship between sugars, mutans streptococcilevels and caries, relatively, little research has been carried out on one of the factors that may influ-ence sugar intake; namely sweet preference. The objective of the present study was to ex-plore the association between sweet preference and the levels of dental caries in 6-12 year-old schoolchildren in Hamedan.

Materials and Methods: Samples of both sexes (n=362) were randomly selected. Chil-dren's preference for sugar was measured using a modified version of the Sweet Prefer-ence Iventory, which assessed their preference for 5 different concentration of freshly pre-pared sucrose/tea solution: 0.075M, 0.15M, 0.3M, 0.6M, and 0.9M. Five thermos flasks were filled with the five different concentrations of tea and color-coded. The children were asked to taste, one after another and select the most palatable solution. Then, caries ex-perience was assessed according to WHO guidelines. Socio-demographic information was collected based on a simple questionnaire.

Results: Three hundreds and twentyof the children completed all aspects of the research. 64 of them were permanent teeth caries free and 51 were milky teeth caries free. Mean DMFT was 0.61 (SD=1.14) and dmft 3.9 (SD=3.12). The majority of the children (41.4%) preferred the two highest concentrations (0.6, 0.9) and 15% of them preferred the highest sweetness level (0.9M).The moderately sweet solution (0.3M), was selected by 30.9% and only 12.4% and 15.3% preferred the less sweet solutions respectively (0.075M, 0.15M).

Conclusion: There was no statistical relationship between sweet preference and dental caries.