Early childhood caries and its correlation with secretory immunoglobulin a

The prevalence of Early Childhood Caries (ECC) was reported quite high in several countries, including Indonesia. Many studies had reported the relationship between sIgA level and ECC. However, the results obtained were not consistent due to the cross-sectional method used in examining sIgA. Therefore the purpose of this study was to analyze the occurence of ECC and sIgA level after 9 months of observation in children aged 2 years and below. The research was observational analytic with a cohort design for 9 months. The sample size was 68 caries-free children under 2 years old, who had at least 2 erupted primary upper incisors. Subjects were taken through purposive sampling from community health center in Medan. The sIgA examination was carried out 3 times, which were at the beginning of the month, at the 3rd and 9th month. The sIgA examination used the ELISA sandwich method and been read at 450 nm using a microplate reader. Caries examination was based on AAPD criteria. Data analysis used independent t-test, Spearman correlation, and longitudinal analysis used general estimating equation (linear) test. The significant value was defined as p<0.05. The results showed that caries-free children had higher sIgA level compared to children with ECC (p=0.003). Spearman correlation test results between the deft score and sIgA level showed a significant correlation (p = 0.006) with r value =-0.33. The higher the child's deft, the lower his/her sIgA level. It was concluded that caries-free children have effective sIgA defense functions in dealing with bacterial infections that cause caries so that salivary sIgA level were found to be higher in caries-free children compared to children with ECC.