J Autism Dev Disord. 2020 Feb 1. doi: 10.1007/s10803-019-04256-x. [Epub ahead of print]

Dental Caries Status in Autistic Children: A Meta-analysis.

Zhang Y¹, Lin L^1,², Liu J¹, Shi L³, Lu J^4,⁵.

Author information

1: Department of Child Psychiatry, Shenzhen Kangning Hospital, Shenzhen, 518003, China.
2: Shenzhen Kangning Hospital, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, 518061, China.
3: People's Hospital of Longhua, Shenzhen, 518109, China.
4: Department of Child Psychiatry, Shenzhen Kangning Hospital, Shenzhen, 518003, China. lujianping2018@email.szu.edu.cn.
5: Shenzhen Kangning Hospital, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, 518061, China. lujianping2018@email.szu.edu.cn.

Abstract

The objective of this meta-analysis was to assess the dental health status of children with ASD in terms of decayed, missing, and filled permanent teeth (DMFT) and decayed, missing, and filled deciduous teeth (dmft). PubMed, Embase, psycINFO, and Cochrane library were searched for studies published until September 2018. A random-effects model was applied to estimate the pooled results.Nine studies comprising 532 children with ASD and 622 controls were included. No significant differences between children with ASD and controls were observed for DMFT and dmft in the world. Subgroup analyses revealed that children with ASD had a significantly higher dmft index than that of controls in Asia.Children with ASD have a worse dental health status than healthy children in Asia, but caution is necessary given the limited studies available for analysis.