Parental Knowledge and Awareness of Fluoride Varnish Application on Their Children - A Cross-Sectional Study.

Introduction: Fluoride varnishes are forms of topical fluoride that are applied on the surfaces of teeth to prevent from dental caries. It contains sodium fluoride, which is the active ingredient in the varnish and the concentration is about 22,600 ppm. Fluoride can promote enamel remineralization which protect against dental caries and it can be professionally applied by dentists and physicians for infants and young children. Methods: In this, cross-sectional study, a close-ended survey containing 14 items was given to 399 randomly assigned parents in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The questionnaire included demographic data and items to assess the general knowledge about fluoride and fluoride varnish. The responses were coded and statistical analysis was performed. Results: About 65.3% of males and 47.4% females were not sure if fluoride application was safe for their children, however, 67.2% of the population revealed that tooth pastes were one among the fluoride sources for their children. Pearson's correlation test showed high statistical significance between the parents' educational background and awareness level of fluoride varnish was of with p-value-0.000 and correlation coefficient (r-value-0.427). Conclusion: The lack of awareness among parents on an important caries-control measure warrants the implementation of special awareness programs on fluorides and its benefits in young children.

Reliable prenatal diagnosis of Canavan disease by measuring N-acetylaspartate in amniotic fluid using liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry.

OBJECTIVE: Prenatal diagnosis of Canavan disease by measuring N-acetylaspartic acid (NAA) in amniotic fluid is reliable and preferred over aspartoacylase enzyme assay especially in populations with unknown mutations. Typically based on GC-MS, existing methods are time-consuming and laborious. We developed a novel LC-MS/MS method for determination of NAA in amniotic fluid with minimal sample preparation. METHOD: NAA and d(3)-NAA were detected by negative-ion electrospray ionization-MS/MS. Quantification was achieved by standard addition using six 0.1 mL portions of each specimen enriched with increasing NAA amounts (0, 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, and 0.4 microg) and endogenous NAA was calculated by extrapolation. RESULTS: Injection-to-injection time was 2 min whereas the turn around time from sample receipt was about 1 h. Intraday (n = 10) and interday (n = 10) variations were less than 9.4%. The reference range determined using gestation-matched controls (n = 12) of 1.1-2.7 micromol/L is in agreement with the literature. Specimens from at-risk pregnancies with established diagnosis (n = 4) were successfully analyzed. CONCLUSION: We developed a new method that enables reliable, sensitive, and selective determination of NAA in a small volume of amniotic fluid for the prenatal diagnosis of Canavan disease. The simple sample preparation adopted in this work precluded the necessity for extraction and derivatization.