The influence of feeding and eating disorders on dental erosion: A meta-analysis

Background: Feeding and eating disorders are related to some dental diseases such as tooth erosion.

Objective: To assess the influence of eating disorders on the risk of tooth erosion.

Search and selection methods: A search for studies on eating disorders and tooth erosion was performed in the following databases: PubMed (MEDLINE, Cochrane Library), Web of Science (WoS), and Scopus.

Data analysis: The estimation of the pooled proportion was carried out with the generic inverse variance method, using the standard error of the proportion (SE) with 95% confidence intervals (95%CI). For dichotomous outcomes, the estimates of the effects of an intervention were expressed as odds ratios (OR) using Mantel-Haenszel (M-H) method with 95%CI.

Results: Twenty-nine studies with 3894 participants (96.7% females, 3.3% males) were included in this meta-analysis. The prevalence of dental erosion among patients with feeding and eating disorders was 55%. In turn, these patients multiplied their risk of presenting dental erosion thirteen times, with highly statistically significant differences (p<0.001). This dental erosion risk was greater in patients with bulimia (OR: 11.34) than in anorexics (OR: 10.61).