Evaluation of the effect of problematic eating behavior on early childhood caries in children aged 3 to 6 years

Eating behavior in childhood has been implicated in the development of dental caries. Thus, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of problematic eating behavior and its association with early childhood caries (ECC) among 3-6 years-old children

This study was performed on 53 children with ECC (case group) and 53 children without ECC (control group). Clinical examination of children was performed to determine the caries indices. Subsequently, the parents of children in both groups were requested to complete the Childrenchr('39')s Eating Behavior Questionnaire (CEBQ). The statistical analysis was performed with SPSS 24. P-values less than 0.05 were considered statistically significant.

The mean age of the subjects in this study was 4.82±1.05 years. The results showed that the food responsiveness, enjoyment of food, emotional overeating, satiety responsiveness, slowness in Eating, emotional undereating and food fussiness were not significantly different between the two groups with ECC and without ECC. Also, based on the results, it was found that the desire for sugary drinks in the two groups was significantly different (P=0.002) as the tendency for sugary drinks was higher in the ECC group. There was a significant relationship between the dmft (r=0.33, p<0.001) and dmfs (r=0.35, p<0.001) indices and the desire for sugary drinks.

The present study showed that the desire for drink could been implicated in the development of early childhood caries. So that with increasing tendency to use sugary drinks, the dmft and dmfs level also increases.