Findings

What do systematic reviews say?

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Evidence found and GRADE certainty

828 questions · 1,477 findings · 103 reviews

No studies found 5 · 0.3%GRADE not reported 1,402 · 94.9%Very low 38 · 2.6%Low 20 · 1.4%Moderate 11 · 0.7%High 1 · 0.1%

Food marketing exposure or greater marketing power vs No, less, or less powerful food marketing

Dental caries · Children and adolescents (general population, aged under 20 years)

Across two studies, 50% showed any association of potential public health harm for dental caries (very low certainty).

1 finding from 1 review

Responsive complementary feeding (RCF) / other caregivers' feeding practices vs Other models of complementary feeding (traditional/non-responsive CF)

Dental caries · Healthy, term-born, normal-birth-weight infants aged 4-24 months (breastfed and/or formula-fed) in Western industrialized countries

No eligible studies examined the influence of complementary feeding practices on later dental caries; this is an evidence gap.

1 finding from 1 review

Antiretroviral therapy (any, including cART) vs No antiretroviral medication (treatment-naive)

Caries experience · Children and adolescents (<18 years) living with HIV (CLWH)

ART was not associated with a significant difference in dental caries experience among CLWH (very low certainty).

1 finding from 1 review

Living with HIV and undergoing antiretroviral therapy (ART/HAART) vs Healthy HIV-negative controls

Dental caries (by severity) · Children or adolescents

One study reported higher median caries severity among CLWH under 12 years; no meta-analytic estimate was pooled.

1 finding from 1 review

Private day care vs Public day care

Dental caries prevalence · Preschool children in Sharjah day cares

Caries prevalence was 77% in private day cares versus 22% in public day cares.

2 findings from 1 review

Higher consumption of snacks / sugar / soft drinks vs Lower consumption

Dental caries · Healthy children and adolescents in the United Arab Emirates

Higher snacking and soft-drink/sugar consumption were associated with more caries in most studies, though one study found no association with sweet-consumption frequency (narrative synthesis; not GRADE-rated).

1 finding from 1 review

Lower parental (maternal/paternal) education vs Higher parental education

Dental caries · Healthy children and adolescents in the United Arab Emirates

The association between parental education and caries was inconsistent; father's (but not consistently mother's) education was inversely associated with caries in some studies (narrative synthesis; not GRADE-rated).

1 finding from 1 review

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) vs Healthy controls without IBD

DMFT/DMFS index (dental caries experience) · Patients with IBD (Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis) and controls without IBD

Most included studies reported higher dental caries indices (DMF-t/DMF-s) in IBD patients (especially ulcerative colitis), but findings were inconsistent across studies and were not meta-analyzed or GRADE-rated.

1 finding from 1 review
  • Oral Health Status in Patients with Inflammatory Bowel Diseases: A Systematic Review. 2021 All outcomes
    Hospital/clinic-based case-control and cross-sectional studies in 11 countries; 15 studies total (1748 participants: 1104 Crohn's disease, 534 ulcerative colitis, 110 IBD-form unspecified)
    Not meta-analyzed (heterogeneity of caries indices). Abstract: "in most studies, patients with IBD were characterized by higher values of caries indices." Table 3 examples (IBD/subtype vs control): Zhang 2020 DMF-t…
    Studies not reported
    GRADE not reported