Diagnostic potential of inflammatory biomarkers in early childhood caries - A case control study.

BACKGROUND: Early Childhood Caries (ECC) is most common chronic infectious disease of childhood. Diagnosis of dental caries has been limited to clinical, visual and radiographic methods but its inflammatory component remained unexplored. Hence, this study aims to evaluate salivary levels of inflammatory cytokines in children with ECC to assess their potential as non-invasive biomarkers. METHODS: 50 subjects were recruited (25 ECC patients and 25 healthy children). Saliva samples were taken from all subjects and collected again from patients after rehabilitative intervention. Levels of IL-6, IL-8 and TNF-alpha were determined using ELISA. Cytokines level were statistically correlated with each other and with DMF score along with ROC curve analysis. RESULTS: Salivary levels of IL-6, IL-8 & TNF-alpha were significantly higher in patients which got significantly reduced after rehabilitative intervention. Levels of these cytokines were significantly associated with severity of dental caries. These cytokines were correlating with each other along with DMF score upon Spearman correlation. ROC curve reveals optimum sensitivity and specificity of these cytokines for diagnosis in ECC with absolute levels observed for IL-6. CONCLUSIONS: Significant elevation of IL-6, IL-8 and TNF-alpha with optimum sensitivity and specificity might imply their involvement as potential non-invasive diagnostic/prognostic markers in ECC.