Evaluation of Caries Prevention Based on Genetic Etiology and Risk.

Overview

Dental caries affects billions of people worldwide and involves saliva immunodeficiency, commensal pathogen and exposure (lifestyle) causal subtypes of the disease. Up to 85% of adolescents in Swedish and other low prevalence populations are caries-free while the remaining 15% show high, recurrent caries activity. Accordingly, there is a lack of cost-effective risk assessment and prevention tools for personalized oral care. This randomized adaptive clinical trial (RCT) evaluates both caries prevention based on genetic etiology and risk, as a consequence of saliva immunodeficiency genes specifying individuals as susceptible or resistant to caries, and the effect of intensified versus selfcare traditional prevention on the two groups.

This is a protocol for a multicenter risk assessment and intervention study (PRECARIES) with an adaptive component. The study design comprises a prescreen of 2000 adolescents of which 520 will be included in the RCT study part with adolescents undergoing ordinary orthodontic treatment with multibrackets at the Public Dental Service. The orthodontic treatment allows for rapid caries development and improved discrimination between susceptible versus resistant individuals. The children are genotyped into two risk groups; genetic susceptible and non-susceptible children that are assigned to intensive or traditional standard prevention. The clinical outcomes will adaptively be measured at different time points (0, 6, 12 and months) as caries lesions at different teeth and surfaces using tactile, visual and X-ray bitewing, clinical photos and quantitative laser fluorescence (QLF). Secondary outcomes will be inflammation at the gingival margins and pocket depth at debonding of the orthodontic appliances. Questionaires are collected as well as biological samples; swab-dna, whole and parotid saliva and microbiota. Human and microbiota geno-and protein typing involves in and ex house platforms adaptively.