Obesity/overweight and dental caries experience in children and adolescents: an umbrella review

The present umbrella review aimed to synthesize and critically assess the methodological and reporting quality of previous systematic reviews about the potential relationship between obesity or overweight and caries dental experience in pediatric patients.

Electronic database and manual searches were conducted in PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane Library up to July 2023. The risk of bias assessment of eligible systematic reviews was performed using the Risk Of Bias In Systematic reviews (ROBIS) tool. A systematization of the results was carried out in order to understand the possible relationship between the two conditions.

Electronic and manual searches identified 136 titles and abstracts. After the removal of duplicates, 15 full-text articles were assessed for eligibility. Six studies were excluded, resulting in 8 systematic reviews and 1 scoping review that met the inclusion criteria. Five were systematic reviews without meta-analysis and the rest were conducted with quantitative analysis.

Conflicting findings to date from this umbrella review suggest that the relationship between obesity and dental caries in children is still inconclusive and likely to be complex.