Lactobacilli and Streptococcus mutans in saliva, diet and caries increment in 8- and 13-year-old children.

The aim of this paper was to evaluate the correlation between some dietary factors and prevalence of lactobacilli and S. mutans in saliva in randomly selected groups of 8- and 13-yr-old children. The relation between these parameters and caries increment over a 1-yr period was also studied. In general there was a weak correlation between the number of these bacteria in saliva and total intake of sugar, sucrose intake and meal frequency. However, the probability of finding low total sugar intake, low sucrose intake and a low meal frequency was highest when there was a low prevalence of both bacteria and finding high total sugar, high sucrose and high meal frequency when there was a high prevalence of both bacteria. It was also shown that knowledge of sugar intake and meal frequency provided some supplement to bacterial tests in the selection of caries-risk patients.