[Clinical evaluation of the occlusion of young Senegalese]. / Evaluation clinique de l'occlusion de jeunes Sénégalais.

The dental occlusion is a basic phase of mastication moreover it is an everlasting concern for the dentist during therapeutic and prevention of dento-maxillo-facial disorders. Senegal is a country of recent dental practice and dental problems are frequent in it. We led this clinical assessment of occlusion on a sample of 30 young Senegalese people aged 18 to 35 years and we tried to evaluate the consequential effects on teeth and periodontal tissues with intent to use this study as pattern of prevalence evaluation of occlusion disorders. Taken at random in the consultation at the Institute of Odontology and Stomatology, these people have been selected by excluding any obvious cause of occlusal disorders. 76.67% of our sample are students and the average patient of the study is à 24 years man, wolof, student dwelling in Dakar. He has an avoid face, is in normocclusion or prognathia and presents a tooth affection which can be related to malocclusion and defective hygiene. 67% of examined teeth are in contact during maximal occlusion and 33% are in entire lack of posterior contact during protrusion meanwhile 73 to 80% present group function. In 70% of studied cases, the superficial periodontium is affected and 30% representing the deep periodontium, are quite safe. This word is a first attempt of prevalence evaluation. It has to be led in multicentric study and at a larger scale in order to have more exact sight of young Senegalese occlusal disorders.

Nutritional status, age and survival: the muscle mass hypothesis.

The relevance of nutritional indices derived from comparison with growth standards to assess the risk of dying was evaluated in a 2-year prospective study in rural Senegal. An average of 3151 children aged 6-59 months were measured twice a year and followed up during the intervening 6-month periods. Children who survived and those who died during follow-up were found to differ more by anthropometric measures directly related to absolute muscle mass (viz. weight, height or arm circumference) than by nutritional indices obtained from comparison with growth standards (weight-for-age, weight-for-height and height-for-age). The findings could not be explained by a confounding effect of age. This brings into question the current approach used to identify high-risk children.

PIP: As part of a nutritional and mortality study ongoing since 1962 in rural Senegal, the relevance of nutritional indices derived from comparison with growth curves was analyzed to assess childrens' risk of dying. During a 2-year prospective study, an average of 3151 children aged 6-59 months were measured at 6 month intervals, a total of 12,605 semesters. 301 children who died during the following 6-months had anthropometric measures taken such as height, weight, mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC), head circumference, and triceps skinfold thickness. Univariate and bivariate multiple linear regression models were constructed and compared including anthropometric indicators such as weight, weight-for- age, weight-for-height, height, height-for-age, mid-upper-arm- circumference (MUAC), MUAC-for-age and age. Measures directly related to body size, such as weight, height and MUAC were found to be more closely related to child survival than any nutritional indices derived from them. Survival is related to a measure of body size which increases with age faster than MUAC but more slowly than weight, and is not due to a confounding effect of age. Mortality peaked at 18-29 months, corresponding to weaning. For a given muscle mass, children with a larger head had a greater risk of dying. Skinfold thickness did not improve assessment, perhaps because it is difficult to measure. Stunting had an independent effect on risk which could not be explained by muscle mass. This analysis suggests that screening schemes based on comparison with growth curves or weight gain are not likely to be predictive of risk of dying; arm circumference without correction for age or height is substantially better than classical nutritional indices.

Effects of whey protein, casein, soya-bean and sunflower proteins on the serum, tissue and faecal steroids in rats.

Four groups of rats were fed for 49 d on one of four semi-purified diets, without added cholesterol and containing 230 g/kg of the following isolated proteins: casein, whey, soya-bean or sunflower. Whey, soya-bean and sunflower proteins, when compared with casein, decreased the level of serum high-density-lipoprotein (HDL)-cholesterol. These low cholesterol levels were accompanied by an increase in the daily faecal excretion of neutral sterols and bile acids in the case of soya-bean protein, and by a decrease in the liver cholesterol content, when rats were fed on whey protein. Considering the amino acid composition of the four purified proteins, we observed that serum total and HDL-cholesterol levels had a significant positive correlation with tyrosine and glutamic acid, and a negative correlation with cystine and alanine. The present study showed that the hypocholesterolaemic effect of dietary proteins was not related to their animal or vegetable origin.