Posted by: November 17, 2023
The UK’s ‘sugar tax’ may have reduced the number of children being admitted to hospital for tooth extractions, NIHR-funded research has found.
The number of under-18s needing extractions in hospital has fallen by 12% since the legislation started in April 2018. This equates to around 5,500 fewer children with tooth decay needing extractions under general anesthesia each year since it started . The biggest declines were in children up to age 9, the researchers found.
Experts at the universities of Cambridge and Glasgow led the study, which is the first of its kind. The results are published in BMJ Nutrition, Prevention and Health.
Sugar-sweetened beverages account for approximately 30% of added sugars in the diet of children aged 1-3 years. This rises to over 50% among older teenagers. In England, nearly 90% of all tooth extractions in young children are due to tooth decay. It results in approximately 60,000 lost school days per year.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended a tax on sugary drinks to reduce sugar intake. More than 50 countries have implemented it.
The UK Government announced the Soft Drinks Industry Levy (SDIL) in March 2016. It aimed to reduce sugar intake by encouraging drink manufacturers to reformulate their products. The tax started in April 2018.
The link between sugary drinks and tooth decay is well established. However, no real-world data studies have previously examined the relationship between levy and dental health.
Researchers analyzed hospital admissions data for childhood caries extractions in children under 18 in England from January 2014 to February 2020. This was four years before and two years after the levy started. The team also broke down the data by age group and by neighborhood deprivation.
They found a drop of 3.7 admissions per 100,000 under-18s from 2018. This was equivalent to a relative reduction of 12% compared to the case without the levy. The trends mean that around 5,638 fewer children are having teeth extracted under general anaesthetic. The biggest falls were in children aged 0-4 years and 5-9 years. This represented declines of 6.5 and 3.3 per 100,000 admissions respectively.
Dr Nina Rogers from the Medical Research Council (MRC) Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge, first author of the study, said: “This is an important finding as children aged 5 to 9 are the most likely to enter the dental hospital. extractions under general anesthesia’.
No significant changes were observed in admission rates in the older age groups of 10-14 years and 15-18 years. But reductions in hospital admissions were seen in children living in most areas regardless of deprivation.
This is an observational study, so causality cannot be determined, the researchers say.
They conclude their study “provides evidence of potential health benefits for children from the end of the UK soft drink industry beyond the obesity it was originally developed to tackle”.
Professor David Conway, co-author and professor of dental public health at the University of Glasgow, said: “Extraction of teeth under general anesthesia is one of the most common reasons for children to be admitted to hospital across the UK. This study shows that ambitious public health policies, such as a tax on sugary drinks, can have an effect on improving children’s oral health.”
Professor Sumantra Ray, Executive Director of NNEdPro Global Center for Nutrition and Healthsaid: “We welcome the publication of this research which attempts to link policy changes and the impact on early life oral and dental health outcomes which, if adverse, would place a significant further burden on dental services in lifelong course.”
The Public Health Research (PHR) Program of the NIHR funded the study.
