Dental Caries and Nutrition in Eskimo Scouts of the Alaska National Guard

¹ National Institute of Dental Research, National Institutes of Health, United States Public Health Service, Bethesda, Maryland, and U. S. Army Medical Research and Nutrition Laboratory, Fitzsimmons Hospital, Denver, Colorado

Dental caries examinations were given 713 men of the two Scout Battalions of the Alaska National Guard in March, 1958. Biochemical determination of the levels of certain nutrients were made for a large fraction of this sample.

Dental caries prevalence was found to be high in the principal villages and some of the villages nearby; intermediate in prevalence in men from relatively remote villages; and very low in men from coastal villages in the Kuskokwim-Yukon delta area. In the last two groups prevalence seemed to be rising.

Men in the high-caries villages tended to be somewhat taller and heavier, to show somewhat higher levels of serum carotene and serum vitamin A, and somewhat lower levels of urinary N'methynicotinamide. There were no differences associated with caries in total plasma protein, hemoglobin, and ascorbic acid, or in urinary thiamine or riboflavin.

These findings would tend to support the earlier conclusion of Siegel, Waugh, and Karshan that relative freedom from caries in the more primitive groups is not due to any nutritional superiority of the traditional diet.

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