The impact of dental environment stress on caries experience, salivary flow rate and uric acid
Main Article Content
Abstract
Background: Several pathologies of the oral cavity have been associated with stress. Dental students need to gain assorted proficiencies as theoretical knowledge, clinical proficiencies, and interpersonal dexterity which is accompanied with high level of stress. Uric acid is the major antioxidant in saliva. The aim of this study is to assess the dental caries experience among dental students with different levels of dental environment stress in relation to physicochemical characteristics of whole unstimulated saliva.
Materials and Methods: the total sample is composed of 300 dental students (73 males, 227 female) aged 22-23 years old, from collage of dentistry / university of Baghdad, from the 4th and 5th grade. The total sample was classified into three categories (mild stress, moderate stress and severe stress) according to Dental environment stress questionnaire (DESQ); Diagnosis and recording of dental caries were assessed according to Decay, Missed, Filled surface and teeth index (DMFS, DMFT) of WHO criteria in 1987. Unstimulated salivary samples were collected from the 95 dental students from the mild stress group (27 male, 28 female) and from the severe stress group (11 male, 29 female). Then, salivary flow rate was measured and chemically analyzed to determine salivary uric acid concentration. All data were analyzed using statistical package for social science (SPSS) version 21.
Results: The mean value of the DMFT and DS fraction was higher among severe stress group of dental environment stress scale with no significant differences (P≥ 0.05), while DMFS, FS and MS fractions were higher among moderate stress group of dental environment stress scale with no significant differences (P≥ 0.05). The data from salivary analysis showed that the mean value of salivary flow rate was lower among severe dental environment stress category than mild dental environment stress category but the difference was statistically not significant, while the mean value of uric acid was higher among students with severe dental environment stress than students with mild dental environment stress with statistically significant difference. The flow rate was negatively correlated with caries experience among both mild and severe stress groups except for the DS was positively correlated with flow rate among students with mild stress. The correlation of uric acid with DMFT was negative among students with mild stress while among severe stress group was positive; however all these correlations were not statistically significant.
Conclusion: Dental environment stress appears to affect oral health, shown by higher caries prevalence among dental students with moderate and severe dental environment stress level by affecting the normal level of salivary flow rate and uric acid.
Keywords: Dental environment stress, stress, dental caries, flow rate, uric acid.
Downloads
Article Details
Issue
Section
Licenses and Copyright
The following policy applies in The Journal of Baghdad College of Dentistry (JBCD):
# JBCD applies the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license to articles and other works we publish. If you submit your paper for publication by JBCD, you agree to have the CC BY license applied to your work. Under this Open Access license, you as the author agree that anyone can reuse your article in whole or part for any purpose, for free, even for commercial purposes. Anyone may copy, distribute, or reuse the content as long as the author and original source are properly cited. This facilitates freedom in re-use and also ensures that JBCD content can be mined without barriers for the needs of research.
# If your manuscript contains content such as photos, images, figures, tables, audio files, videos, etc., that you or your co-authors do not own, we will require you to provide us with proof that the owner of that content (a) has given you written permission to use it, and (b) has approved of the CC BY license being applied to their content. We provide a form you can use to ask for and obtain permission from the owner. If you do not have owner permission, we will ask you to remove that content and/or replace it with other content that you own or have such permission to use.Don't assume that you can use any content you find on the Internet, or that the content is fair game just because it isn't clear who the owner is or what license applies.
# Many authors assume that if they previously published a paper through another publisher, they own the rights to that content and they can freely use that content in their paper, but that’s not necessarily the case, it depends on the license that covers the other paper. Some publishers allow free and unrestricted re-use of article content they own, such as under the CC BY license. Other publishers use licenses that allow re-use only if the same license is applied by the person or publisher re-using the content. If the paper was published under a CC BY license or another license that allows free and unrestricted use, you may use the content in your JBCD paper provided that you give proper attribution, as explained above.If the content was published under a more restrictive license, you must ascertain what rights you have under that license. At a minimum, review the license to make sure you can use the content. Contact that JBCD if you have any questions about the license. If the license does not permit you to use the content in a paper that will be covered by an unrestricted license, you must obtain written permission from the publisher to use the content in your JBCD paper. Please do not include any content in your JBCD paper which you do not have rights to use, and always give proper attribution.
# If any relevant accompanying data is submitted to repositories with stated licensing policies, the policies should not be more restrictive than CC BY.
# JBCD reserves the right to remove any photos, captures, images, figures, tables, illustrations, audio and video files, and the like, from any paper, whether before or after publication, if we have reason to believe that the content was included in your paper without permission from the owner of the content.
How to Cite
