Effect of partial substitution of invert sugar for sucrose in combination with Duraphat treatment on caries development in preschool children: the Malmö Study.

The aim was to study the effect of substitution of invert sugar for sucrose, in combination with fluoride varnish (Duraphat) treatment twice a year, on caries development in preschool children. One hundred and eighty-seven 4-years-olds were divided randomly into four sugar groups: (1) sucrose (S), (2) sucrose-Duraphat (SD), (3) invert sugar (I), and (4) invert sugar-Duraphat (ID). All families were asked to buy beverages, biscuits, breakfast cereals, marmalade, ice cream, jam, ketchup, sweets and table sugar, totally 32 different food items, sweetened with invert sugar or sucrose. The substitution was, thus, restricted to a number of sugar-rich between-meal products. The study was carried out double-blind for 2 years. The children of those parents who did not want to participate in the sugar groups were divided randomly into one of the following two groups: (5) Duraphat (D), and control (C). Because of lack of cooperation, only 114 of the 187 children (61%) were considered to have completed the study. The mean caries increment, including initial lesions, was 3.86 dmfs in the combined groups S and SD (n = 63) and 3.10 dmfs in the combined groups I and ID (n = 51) during the 2 years (p = 0.34). The corresponding values for the 2nd year only were 1.84 and 0.67 dmfs, respectively (p = 0.09). The mean caries increment was 2.86 dmfs in group D (n = 113) and 4.10 dmfs (p = 0.08) in group C (n = 93). If initial caries lesions were excluded from the index, the difference between groups D and C was significant (p = 0.008).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Specific conditions of distress in the dental situation.

The general feeling of distress in the dental situation has been studied in 60 female dental patients and correlated to the following variables: Experimentally evaluated sensitivity to pain, self-rating and the dentist's rating of sensitivity to pain, the pain-threshold value in the teeth, the need of local anesthesia, extraversion-introversion, neuroticism, and some percept-genetic psychological measures of adaptive behavior. The subjects have also answered a questionnaire for grading their distress in regard to different aspects of the treatment-situation, which were combined into eight groups using factor analysis and then correlated to the general distress. The variables having a significant relation to distress in the dental situation were: the dentist's rating of the patient's sensitivity, the need of anesthesia, four groups of treatment-components and two of the percept-genetic measures. There was also a certain relation to the pain threshold in the teeth.