Correlation between Oral Health Status (DMFT) and BMI Index in Khuzestan Province, Iran during 2012-2013

Dear Editor- in-ChiefHaving a healthy long life cannot be achieved without a good cooperation between different parts of the body. Obesity is considered to be the fastest growing health risk in the world (1). Iran has experienced a rapid nutrition transition char- acterized by decrease in physical activity and in- crease energy intake leading to rapid overweight since 1990s (2). On the other hand, worldwide, dental caries is the most prevalent of the oral dis- eases. The decayed, missing and filled teeth (DMFT) index was created to express caries expe- rience (3). In many countries, including Iran, most epidemiological research in dentistry has been conducted among children and adolescents, while the corresponding data on adults are limited.According to the previous surveys Khuzestan was one of the province with the highest DMFT index in the country (4) makes it a strategic place for further researches so we conducted a study to de- termine BMI index, and oral health status (DMFT) according to sex, place of living, level of education, frequency of tooth brushing of people living in the southwest of Iran and also the rela- tion between those indices with a goal to provide data that may be useful for health policy develop- ment and program planning. This cross-sectional analytic epidemiologic research was a one-stage observation with multistage cluster sampling method consisted of 1500 subjects from a popula- tion of approximately 3070342, aged 5-6, 12, 15, 35-44 and 65-74 year olds living in rural and cities of Khuzestan, Iran during 2012 through 2013. The procedure started by randomly selecting 100 families as clusters and 300 samples for each age group using statistical software and postal ad- dresses. One dentist with trained oral hygienists carried out the whole examination. All recruits received an explanation regarding the examination and had been invited to take part in the health Survey. Individuals with known systemic diseases that can affect the BMI or DMFT index such as diabetes or thyroid disorders were excluded from the study. Demographic information consist of sex (male versus female), location (city versus ru- ral), frequency of tooth brushing (daily, weekly, often, never), level of education in adults (illiterate, primary, secondary, university) was collected from each participant. The clinical examination taken place with the use of portable dental unite, plane mouth mirrors and WHO ball ended periodontal probes. No radiograph had been taken. The de- cayed, missing and filled teeth (DMFT) index for permanent dentition and DMFT for primary den- tition was recorded using WHO standard criteria and had been written on the standard WHO den- tal assessment forms.Anthropometric (height in meter and weight in kilogram) measurements were done for each par- ticipant using standard digital scales for calculating BMI. BMI values calculated from equation of weight (kg)/height (m)2. According to the growth chart from national center for health statistics (NCHS) / centers for disease control and preven- tion (CDC) 2000 BMI-for-age criteria calculated as group I (underweight 85th and or = 95th per- cent). Of 568 males and 932 females examined in this study the mean DMFT index for Khuzestanian population was found 2.41 without any significant differences according to sex and location. Table 1 shows data on decayed/ missing/ filled teeth and compares the DMFT values of subjects with re- spect to their age, sex, location and BMI. One way ANOVA followed by a post hoc test showed Sig- nificant higher DMFT indices were found by in- creasing the age factor between all groups( P