Pollutants could impact dental caries risk

Certain environmental factors could predict the risk of dental caries, according to a news article from Oral Health.

In a study published in the Journal of Dental Research, researchers used an unsupervised machine learning-based approach to examine data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey — with the goal of exploring the relationship between environmental exposures and dental caries risk. They developed a multidimensional pipeline to declutter the NHANES data set

The researchers found that certain factors, including lead exposure, laboratory markers, dietary signatures and sleep patterns were potentially correlated with dental caries. For instance, the risk of dental caries was elevated among those with increased levels of lead, cadmium and cotinine. Further, they identified distinct clusters based on age. The researchers stressed that patients younger than 5 years and those older than 65 years had the greatest signals of caries clustering, representing opportunities to introduce targeted prevention strategies.  

Read more: Oral Health

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