Exposure to dental amalgam restorations in pregnant women

A selection of abstracts of clinically relevant papers from other journals. The abstracts on this page have been chosen and edited by John R. Radford.

Abstract

Amalgam restorations and pregnancy.

Main

Lygre GB, Björkman L et al. Community Dent Oral Epidemiol 2010. doi: 10.1111/j.1600-0528.2010.00544.x

The fundamental research question as to whether or not prenatal exposure to mercury from amalgam fillings could potentially harm the foetus is not investigated in this study. Instead, associations are identified between a range of factors observed in pregnant women and amalgam restorations. Data was obtained from two questionnaires obtained from 67,355 pregnant mothers recruited to the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study. Appropriate statistical analyses showed that 'age, education level, BMI, and smoking are associated with' those women having more than 12 teeth with amalgam fillings. Despite recommendations to the contrary, 4.5% of the subjects in this study 'reported that amalgam fillings had been placed or removed' during pregnancy.