Abstract
Dental fluorosis is a disease associated with prolonged intake of high concentrations of fluoride, mainly by drinking water consumption. In a rural region in NW Argentina, several localities are supplied for domestic use by surface waters with variable contents of dissolved F? (from 0.3 to 3.1 mg L?1) of geogenic origin. Dental fluorosis, from very mild to severe, has been registered in the population according to the spatial variability of dissolved F?. In this work, statistical models demonstrated that the concentrations of dissolved F? that determine the occurrence of dental fluorosis (and its severity) depend on the concentrations of dissolved Ca2+. In children and adolescents, the probability of presenting this disease, at any degree, increases with age and dissolved F?; whereas moderate-to-severe degree is controlled by an inverse relationship between dissolved F? and Ca2+. This last result was also obtained in the group of adults, for any degree of dental fluorosis. Thus, for a particular concentration of dissolved F?, as dissolved Ca2+ increases, the probability of developing dental fluorosis decreases. The findings of this work could be useful to adjust the current regulations, since guidelines of dissolved F? in drinking water for different degrees of dental fluorosis are not considered, nor the relationship between F? and Ca2+.
*Original full-text article online at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40899-022-00745-7