Relationship between breastfeeding and dental caries in school children in China:a meta analysis

Objective To evaluate the influence of breastfeeding on dental caries in Chinese school children and to provide evidences for the prevention of dental caries.Methods Articles on feeding methods,dental caries and their relationship published between 1996 through 2015 were systematically retrieved via Chinese Biomedical Database(CBM),Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure(CNKI),VIP Database,and Wang fang Data;Stata11.0 software was adopted in meta analysis.Results Totally 20 qualified researches(17 cross-sectional and 3 case-control studies) were retrieved,with a sample size of 18 707.Compared with artificial feeding,breastfeeding reduced the prevalence of dental caries(odds ratioOR=0.581,95% confidence interval95% CI:0.433-0.779;P<0.001).The results of subgroup analysis showed no significantly reduced heterogeneity and revealed the anti-dental caries effect of breastfeeding in school children only for the cross-sectional studies among Han children in northern China and published before 2005 in non-core journals;in addition,the studies did not adopt the criterion for diagnosis of dental caries recommended by World Health Organization.The results of sensitivity analysis demonstrated that all studies retrieved were good in stability and no publication bias was identified.Conclusion The protective effect of breastfeeding on dental caries is obvious,suggesting breastfeeding should be advocated.