Drinking water with added fluoride during childhood helps dental health in adulthood decades later, according to a study to be published in the October issue of the American Journal of Public Health (Vol. 100:10).
Lead investigator Matthew Neidell, Ph.D., a health policy professor at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, found a strong relationship between fluoride levels in a resident's county at the time of their birth with tooth loss as an adult.
"Your fluoridation exposure at birth is affecting your tooth loss in your 40s and 50s, regardless of what your fluoridation exposure was like when you were 20 and 30 years old," Neidell said in a press release.
He combined data from a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention community health study and a water census to see the effects of drinking fluoridated water in the 1950s and 1960s on tooth loss in the 1990s.
"We know that the benefits of fluoridation are greatest from birth," said co-author Howard Pollick, B.D.S., M.P.H., a professor of clinical dentistry at the University of California, San Francisco. "This recent study adds credence to that."
For children who do not have their adult teeth yet, fluoride still improves tooth enamel. Fluoride also helps teeth damaged from the decay process and breaks down bacteria on teeth.
Study respondents who did not live in the same county their entire lives received differing amounts of fluoride in their water, which complicated study findings, the researchers wrote. The study, which focused on tooth loss as an indication of overall oral health, could not adjust for factors such as toothpaste use, which also provides a dose of fluoride.
Roughly 75% of people are served by public water systems that have fluoride added, Dr. Pollick said. The process uses small amounts of the naturally occurring mineral to increase concentrations to no more than 1 part per million typically.
The ADA, which has supported fluoridation of community water since 1950, said scientists continue to show that adding fluoride to water is safe and aids tooth health. One 2007 study of Kaiser Permanente HMO members found that adults benefited from community fluoridation more than children.
Dr. Pollick pointed to a study of Medicaid dental patients in Louisiana that showed that for every $1 invested in water fluoridation, the state saw $38 in reduced dental costs.
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