Aim
To study the saliva profiles in children with severe heart disease taking heart failure medication compared with the saliva from healthy age and gender matched controls. Study design: Cross sectional case-control design.
Conclusion
Reduced salivary secretion could be a caries risk factor in children taking heart failure medication.
Methods
Twenty-four age and gender matched pairs of children, mean age 12.0 years participated. Stimulated saliva was collected in a standardized way before lunchtime and the subjects were asked to refrain from all eating, drinking and tooth brushing 90 mins before sampling. Stimulated salivary secretion rate, buffering capacity, total salivary viable count of bacteria, mutans streptococci and lactobacilli, calcium, chloride, magnesium, potassium, sodium and salivary IgA were determined.
Results
There were 7 of the 24 children in the cardiac group who had secretions below 0.5 ml/min compared with no child in the control group (p<0.01). Lower [corrected] total viable counts of bacteria (TVC) were detected in the cardiac group 1.4x10&sup6; ± 1.2x10&sup7; vs. 2.7x10&sup6; ± 2.9x10&sup7; in the control group (p<0.05). Mutans streptococci (MS) in the cardiac group were 5.2x10&sup4; ± 1.5x10&sup5; vs. 8.1 x10³ ± 1.3x10&sup4; in the control group, (p>0.05) and MS ratio of TVC constituted 0.11±0.35 per cent compared to 0.01±0.02 per cent for the control group (p>0.05). Statistics: Continuous data were analysed by an analysis of variance (ANOVA) and categorical data by chi-square test.