105 The Nutritional Status of Young Children with Carious Teeth
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Anecdotal reports suggest that young children with severe tooth decay are underweight. It has been hypothesized that these children may experience feeding disruptions that affect their nutrient intake. Inadequate nutrient intake over a period of time may result in developmental, cognitive, and behavioural deficits. Prior related research is limited to body weight comparisons between children with and without caries. This study develops the inquiry by including five known indicators of nutritional status. A case-series study assessed the nutritional status of children aged two to five years with six or more carious teeth receiving dental rehabilitation at a hospital dental clinic (N=50). Measures of nutritional status involved anthropometry, triceps skin folds (TSF) and measurement of mid arm circumference (MAC), with a subsequent calculation of mid arm muscle circumference (MAMC). Blood tests were conducted on a subset of subjects (N=41) to assess for markers of malnutrition (albumin, ferritin, and haemoglobin). Values were compared against population standards for age and gender. Normal weights were found in 64% (32), while 18% (9) were underweight, being below the 90th percentile of Ideal Body Weight for Height (%IBW). Nine children were overweight or obese (over 110% IBW). When TSF and MAMC were compared to population standards, 28% (14) had lower levels of fat and 10% (5) had lower lean muscle stores. Serum albumin levels were low for one-half (21) the cases. Haemoglobin levels were below the accepted range for 31% (13), and 46% (19) were in the lower end of the acceptable range. Serum ferritin levels were below normal in 78% (32) of the cases. The results suggest that weight may not be a useful indicator of nutritional status in children with severe tooth decay. The other measurements demonstrate signs of abnormal nourishment such as deficiencies in fat, protein and energy stores. The high rate of iron deficiency in this group is of concern. Given the consequences of inadequate nutrition and low iron stores for young children, these findings suggest more consideration should be given to nutritional evaluation of children with severe tooth decay as well as timely diagnosis, prevention and treatment.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 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 source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), 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".