Children Who Live With Parents-Smokers Get More Dental Cavities
INTELIHEALTH - Kids in smokers’ homes may have more decay.
Dentists from University Leuven in Leuven, Belgium, looked at information from 3-year-old and 5-year-old children. They studied about 1,250 children in each age group. Each child had a dental exam. Researchers also collected information on what they ate and how often their teeth were brushed. They looked at other information, too, such as family income.
Of the 3-year-olds, about 7% had tooth decay. About 30% of the 5-year-olds had decay.
Once the researchers took other things into account – such as how often a child’s teeth were brushed, and family income – they found that parental smoking did not affect cavities in the 3-year-olds. However, a 5-year-old with at least one smoking parent was more than 3 times as likely to have cavities as a 5-year-old whose parents didn’t smoke.
Other studies also have found that parents’ smoking may be linked with decay in children. Last year, a study from South Africa found that secondhand smoke in the home might raise the risk for decay in teenagers. A Japanese study found that kids who lived with at least one smoker had more decayed teeth than kids who didn’t. In 2000, U.K. scientists found that children whose mothers smoked were at greater risk of tooth decay.
The Belgian study appears in the June issue of the journal Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology.
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