Dental Amalgam and Multiple Sclerosis: A Systematic Review and Meta‐Analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: Amalgam restorations have long been controversial due to their mercury content. Allegations that the mercury may be linked to nervous disorders such as Alzheimer's, chronic fatigue syndrome, and multiple sclerosis (MS) have fueled the calls for the removal of amalgam restorations from dentists' armamentarium. To explore and quantify the association between amalgam restorations and MS we have conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of the literature. METHODS: A systematic search in Medline (from 1966 to April 2006), EMBASE (2006, Week 16), and the Cochrane library (Issue 2, 2006) for English-language articles meeting specific definitions of MS and amalgam exposure was conducted. Studies were also identified using the references of retrieved articles. Studies were independently reviewed by two authors and disagreements were resolved by consensus. Studies were selected based on an a priori of defined criteria. Odds ratios (ORs) or relative risks were pooled using the random effects model. Heterogeneity was assessed using Q statistics. RESULTS: The pooled OR for the risk of MS among amalgam users was consistent, with a slight, nonstatistically significant increase between amalgam use and risk of MS. CONCLUSION: Future studies that take into consideration the amalgam restoration size and surface area along with the duration of exposure are needed in order to definitively rule out any link between amalgam and MS.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.006 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".