Evaluation of caries experience in two genders and ENAM polymorphism in Iranian adults

One of the most prevalent oral health problems is dental caries. It affects 60% to 90% of schoolchildren and the vast majority of adults. The purpose of this investigation was to investigate the genetic association of the ENAM gene polymorphism rs3796704 with dental caries in a case and control study. A total of 402 individuals participated in this study comprising 236 high dental caries and 166 low dental caries as controls. They were based referred to the Clinic of Dentistry at the Medical University in Shiraz, Iran. Genomic DNA was extracted from peripheral blood after written and informed consent was obtained. The DNA samples were genotyped for rs3796704 polymorphism using the TP-ARMS-PCR method followed by the sequencing of randomly selected samples. In this study, the caries rates for females were approximately two times higher than the frequency of caries among males. The genotyping results showed that there were no differences in allelic and genotypic frequencies between the case and control groups. Further studies are required to identify the susceptible loci for dental caries in our case and control groups.