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| LETTER TO EDITOR |
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| Year : 2020 | Volume
: 8
| Issue : 2 | Page : 23-24 |
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Dental caries and body mass index: A cross-sectional study among urban schoolchildren of age between 7 and 15 years in Chennai, India
Anusha Raghavan, Krishnan Lakshmi, Parangimalar Diwakar Madan Kumar
Department of Public Health Dentistry, Ragas Dental College and Hospital, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
| Date of Submission | 17-Nov-2020 |
| Date of Acceptance | 26-Apr-2021 |
| Date of Web Publication | 12-Jul-2021 |
Correspondence Address:
Dr. Anusha Raghavan
Department of Public Health Dentistry, Ragas Dental College and Hospital, 2/102, East Coast Road, Uthandi, Chennai - 600 119, Tamil Nadu
India
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
DOI: 10.4103/ijcd.ijcd_12_20
How to cite this article:
Raghavan A, Lakshmi K, Kumar PD. Dental caries and body mass index: A cross-sectional study among urban schoolchildren of age between 7 and 15 years in Chennai, India. Int J Community Dent 2020;8:23-4 |
How to cite this URL:
Raghavan A, Lakshmi K, Kumar PD. Dental caries and body mass index: A cross-sectional study among urban schoolchildren of age between 7 and 15 years in Chennai, India. Int J Community Dent [serial online] 2020 [cited 2021 Aug 4];8:23-4. Available from: https://www.ijcommdent.com/text.asp?2020/8/2/23/321214 |
Sir,
I thank the editorial team of the International Journal of Community Dentistry and Dr. Al-Mendalawi MD for their keen interest in our study. We appreciate and thank Dr. Al-Mendalawi for his valuable comments and for pointing out the importance of region-specific body mass index cutoff for assessment.[1] As rightly quoted in the editorial, population specific standards measure overweight and obesity, have not been revised since 2015.[2] The Dietary Guidelines for Indians by the Indian Council of Medical Research after 2011have not adopted the new guidelines by the Indian Pediatric Association as they are reported to have similar cutoffs.[3] Furthermore, we would like to bring to notice that, though the revised growth charts provide substantially better information, there has still not been any agreed-upon consensus for the same from the governing bodies indicating the need for a pan-India study to better understand the population changes.[4] As a result, the next available standardized data which allowed easier categorization of the study population for analysis was used, which is the CDC criterion.[5] However, taking note on the comments by Dr. Al-Mendalawi, we have reassessed the data according to the percentile specification given in the study by Kadhikar et al. (2015) and compared the factors separately for boys and girls. This study considers boys above the 71st percentile and girls above the 75th percentile in the height–weight chart as obese, in contrast to the 85th percentile values based on CDC guidelines. This revised analysis demonstrated that there existed a positive correlation between obesity and dental caries among boys, similar to what was demonstrated in our earlier results. Further snacking was associated with obese females though not found to have any statistically significant correlation [Table 1]a and [Table 1]b.
Hence, within the limitation pointed out in our manuscript, we would like to reconfirm that with the exception of dental caries and obesity in boys, none of the factors demonstrated correlation among this sampled population. We do hope this explanation would satisfy our readers. We again thank for the interest generated in this study.
Financial support and sponsorship
Nil.
Conflicts of interest
There are no conflicts of interest.
| References | |  |
| 1. | Al-Mendalawi MD. Dental caries and body mass index: A cross-sectional study among urban schoolchildren of age between 7 and 15 years in Chennai, India. Int J Community Dent 2019;7:49.  [Full text] |
| 2. | Khadilkar VV, Khadilkar AV. Revised Indian Academy of Pediatrics 2015 growth charts for height, weight and body mass index for 5-18-year-old Indian children. Indian J Endocrinol Metab 2015;19:470-6. |
| 3. | Manual A. Dietary guidelines for Indians. Nat Inst Nutr 2011;2:89-117. |
| 4. | Manupriya.Will new Indian growth charts help stem the rise in childhood obesity? BMJ 2015;350:h2013. |
| 5. | |
[Table 1]
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