Dental Caries Experience and its Association with Streptococcus mutans-Candida albicans Counts in a Group of Egyptian Children

Abstract

Dental caries is a multi-factorial disease. It affects all races, ages, and socioeconomic groups. In the domain of pediatric dentistry, early childhood caries (ECC) is a well-known challenge. Being cognizant of the possible contributing risk factors is absolutely imperative to fill the gaps in our knowledge and to create a complete model of caries etiology. S.mutans has been known as the key player in the caries process, while the cariogenicity of C.albicans has been recently proposed. Scarce literature was available on salivary and dentinal carriage patterns of C.albicans among Egyptian children. Therefore, the present study aimed to examine the salivary and dentinal levels of S.mutans and C.albicans among a group of Egyptian children and to assess their association with dental caries experience. Moreover, in an attempt to explore one of the virulence attributes of C.albicans, the expression levels of C.albicans Sap1 and 2 were investigated. The current study was an observational case-control study. Sixty Egyptian children were recruited from the Outpatient Clinic of the Pediatric Dentistry and Dental Public Health Department-Faculty of Dentistry-Ain Shams University. Eligible children were selected according to certain inclusion and exclusion criteria. The ethical aspects of the research, proposed by the ethical committee of Faculty of Dentistry- Ain Shams University, were fulfilled. Questionnaire interview was conducted. The questionnaire aimed at gathering data about some of the risk factors of dental