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Abstract Dental caries (DC) is the most prevalent chronic disease. Previous studies have revealed negative associations between DC prevalence and both drinking water fluoride concentration (F) and socioeconomic status but further predictors, notably drinking water calcium, have been little explored, particularly in the UK. Therefore, this study employed multiple linear regression (MLR) to model the dependency of children’s DC on all three of these predictors, namely (i) F, (ii) IMD: index of multiple deprivation, and (iii) WH: water hardness—as a proxy for calcium concentration; in England. The results showed that all three predictors are statistically significantly (p 0.37 mg/L, a concentration considerably lower than the widely reported optimal F, i.e., (0.7–1.0) mg/L. Any modelling of expected costs and benefits for fluoridation should explicitly include consideration of water calcium (or WH as proxy) and the non-first-order linear DC ~ F relationship.
Mehrabi et al. (Mon,) studied this question.
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