Association between obesity and dental caries in children and adolescents. Review.

Obesity and dental caries share common and modifiable risk factors: diet and lifestyle.Objective: Identify and analyze the available literature on the possible association between obesity and dental caries in children and adolescents.Method: Tho researchers conducted a review of the literature in Spanish, English, and Portuguese using Pubmed, SciELO, Latindex, and Cochrane (obesity AND body mass index AND caries AND children OR adolescents).Results: 115 articles were identified, and 28 articles were included after full text analysis (21 cross-sectional studies, 4 longitudinal studies, 3 systematic reviews). Four cross-sectional studies and one longitudinal study demonstrated the association between obesity and the presence of caries.Conclusions: The studies analyzed on the association between obesity and caries present inconsistent results. The multifactorial origin of the pathologies analyzed can contribute to rejecting the hypothesis of association of both pathologies from the excessive of and fermentable