Water From Bottles to Establish Strong Teeth

Not Applicable

Recruiting

• Conditions: Dental Caries in Children
• Interventions: Other: Non-fluoridated drinking water; Other: Fluoridated bottled drinking water

• Registration Number: NCT04893681
• Lead Sponsor: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Brief Summary

The waterBEST study is a proof-of-concept, randomized, double-masked, placebo controlled, parallel group study evaluating dental caries-preventive effects of fluoridated bottled water compared to non-fluoridated bottled water in 4-year-old children.

Detailed Description

This is a proof-of-concept, randomized, double-masked, placebo controlled, parallel group study evaluating dental caries-preventive effects of fluoridated bottled water compared to non-fluoridated bottled water in 4-year-old children. Children will be allocated at random to receive either fluoridated or non-fluoridated sourced from two local public water systems. The water will be packaged into 5-gallon bottles and delivered to households during a 3½ year intervention period. During the intervention period, parents/guardians/caregivers will be interviewed quarterly to monitor children's general health and a dental screening will be conducted annually. Children's fingernail and toenail clippings will be collected annually and analyzed to determine the fluoride content as a biomarker of total fluoride intake. Dental caries experience, the primary endpoint, will be determined once in a dental examination conducted by a study dentist close to the time of the child's 4th birthday. For the primary aim, a least-squares, generalized linear model will estimate efficacy and its one-tailed, upper 80% confidence limit using the number of decayed, missing and filled primary tooth surfaces as the dependent variable.

Study Timeline

• Study First Submitted: 2021-05-07
• Study First Submitted QC: 2021-05-14
• Study First Posted: 2021-05-19
• Study Start: 2022-04-04
• Status Verified: 2023-10
• Last Update Submitted: 2023-10-06
• Last Update Posted: 2023-10-10
• Primary Completion: 2026-06
• Study Completion: 2026-06

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: RECRUITING
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 200

Inclusion Criteria

• The parent/guardian/caregiver understands and consents to procedures described in parental permission and consent form.
• Child is aged 2 months to 6 months at the screening visit.
• Child either drinks water (either plain water, or water mixed with something) or is expected to drink water by their first birthday, as reported by the parent/guardian/caregiver at the screening visit.

Read More

Exclusion Criteria

• The child's primary dwelling at the screening visit has tap water that contains >0.60 mg/L F and the parent/guardian/caregiver expresses a preference that the child drink tap water, not bottled water, for the child's first four years of life. For children who live at more than one dwelling, the primary dwelling is defined as the one at which they usually sleep at least four nights per week.
• Child has serious illness/es requiring frequent inpatient hospitalization, as reported by the parent/ guardian/caregiver at the screening visit.
• Child's birth weight was less than 1,500 g (3 pounds 5 ounces).
• Child's gestational age was less than 34 weeks.
• Child uses fluoride supplements, as reported by the parent/ guardian/caregiver at the screening visit.
• Parent/guardian/caregiver states at the screening visit the child will initiate fluoride supplementation before the child's 4th birthday
• The parent/ guardian/caregiver anticipates that the child will move to an address more than 30 miles from Kinston, NC before the child's 4th birthday.
• The investigators determine that a child living at the same primary dwelling has already been enrolled in the study. (This means that if two or more children fulfilling the inclusion criteria live at the primary dwelling, the parent will be asked to select one such child to be the study participant.)
• Anything that, in the opinion of the principal investigator, would place the participant at increased risk or preclude the participant's full compliance with or completion of the study.

Read More

Study & Design

• Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Design: PARALLEL

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
Non-fluoridated bottled water	Non-fluoridated drinking water	5-gallon bottles containing water from the North Lenoir Water Corporation's Black Creek aquifer which contains a negligible concentration of fluoride.
Fluoridated bottle water	Fluoridated bottled drinking water	5-gallon bottles containing water from the New Bern Water Resources Division's Black Creek aquifer which contains naturally-occurring fluoride in a concentration of approximately 0.8 mg/L F

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
dmfs index	Dental examination in year 4	The number of primary tooth surfaces that are decayed, missing or filled will be enumerated during dental examinations of children near the time of their 4th birthday. Decay will be assessed clinically at the threshold of macroscopic enamel loss, as per criteria defined by the International Caries Detection and Assessment System. Five surfaces per tooth will be enumerated in all primary teeth (maximum = 20 teeth per child), yielding a count of affected surfaces that can range from 0 (no dental caries experience) to 100 (worst possible extent of dental caries experience). The lower-case abbreviation "dmfs" signifies disease in the primary dentition, a convention used to distinguish it from equivalent measures for the permanent dentition, where an uppercase abbreviation is used, as defined for the National Library of Medicine's Medical Subject Heading heading "DMF Index".

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Fluoride content of fingernail and toenail biospecimens	Up to three years after randomization.	Fluoride content of fingernail and toenail clippings will provide a biomarker of total fluoride intake at intervals of 1, 2 and 3 years after randomization. Fluoride content will be measured in mg/kg using a hexamethyldisiloxane-facilitated diffusion assay of nail clippings collected from study subjects.
Adverse events	Through study completion, an average of 42 months.	Number of adverse events, sub-classified according to whether or not the event is serious, and whether or not the event is related (either possibly, probably or definitely) to the intervention.

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

Division of Pediatric and Public Health, UNC Adams School of Dentistry; 🇺🇸 Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States