| Sumario: | Objective: The relationship between salivary components and caries experience in different nutritional status of children remains controversial. The study was directed to assess the effect of nutritional status of children on both caries experience and severity with salivary alkaline phosphatase enzyme. Materials and Methods: It was a descriptive cross-sectional study. Participants included 82 children, 6-8 years old. Oral examination was conducted for the recording of dental caries experience by DMFS for Permanent teeth and dmfs for primary teeth. Dental caries severity was recorded for deciduous teeth and permanent teeth to take the account of the d1-4 and D1-4. The children were divided into 3 groups according to the nutritional status: normal weight, overweight, obese. Unstimulated salivary samples were collected to determine the salivary alkaline phosphatase activity spectrophotometrically. Results: Mean value of dmfs for the total children was 12.829 ± 1.028 while the mean value of DMFS was 0.803 ± 0.181. Lower level in caries experience of deciduous teeth in overweight children and higher level of alkaline phosphatase was reported in obese children without statistical significant differences. For the permanent teeth, the results disclosed lower level in dental caries experience in obese children with non-significant difference. No statistical significant differences were reported in caries severity among the three groups (p > 0.05). Conclusions: Nutritional status may have no effect on the level salivary alkaline phosphatase, caries experience and caries severity. More studies are necessary to confirm results in this issue.
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