Abstract

Dental caries or tooth decayed is one of the major public health problem among children and adults, an increased in body mass index, poor oral hygiene practices and bad diet intake are common causes of increasing trend in dental caries all around the world. In the present study we aimed to see the association of primary and permanent dental caries of Larkana and Peshwar city children of Pakistan with body mass index, oral hygiene and diet habits, a secondary baseline data were used to find the results of this study, total 3358 children were examined for dental caries, information on age, body mass index, oral hygiene practice and diet habits was obtained, 64.1% data were obtained from Peshawar children, 52.2% were females, 7% samples found with none meat intake per week, 5.6% with none vegetable intake, 4.3% with none rice intake and 38% found with none intake of milk in a week, a significant association of primary and permanent dental caries were obtained with body mass index, oral hygiene and diet habits using Pearson chi square test with p-value less than 0.05.

Keywords: Dental caries; Body mass index; Oral hygiene