UCSF receives $24.4 million to fight early childhood cavities

......The 1999-2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, from the Centers for Disease Control, illustrated these disparities in children by race/ethnicity, with 42 percent of Mexican American and 32 percent of black children ages 2-5 having decayed or filled teeth, compared with 24 percent of white children.

The new programs will assess the best way to reach susceptible young children and their caregivers to prevent early childhood caries and reduce oral health disparities. Early childhood caries is a particularly devastating form of dental caries in young children. General anesthesia is often required for treatment of early childhood caries, making it an expensive and traumatic condition to treat, said Jane Weintraub, DDS, MPH, professor and chair of the Division of Oral Epidemiology and Dental Public Health at UCSF.

“We need to get out the message that healthy baby teeth are important for children’s health and well-being,” said Weintraub, who is the principal investigator for the CAN DO Center. “We have an easy, relatively low-cost strategy – fluoride varnish painted on the child’s teeth – that helps to help prevent teeth from decaying and causing children to have toothaches and difficulty eating, sleeping and speaking.”

Fluoridated USA and still we have rotten teeth associated with the socially disadvantaged.