The role of vitamins in oral health. A systematic review and meta-analysis

The association between vitamins and oral health have recently been discussed, yielding increased attention from medical and dental perspectives. The present review aimed to systematically evaluate and appraise the most recently scientific papers investigating the role of vitamins in the prevention and treatment of the main oral diseases as hard dental pathological processes and gum/periodontal disease. Randomized controlled trials, cross-sectional studies, cohort studies, comparative studies, validation studies and evaluation studies, following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, reporting associations between vitamins and oral diseases or the use of vitamins to prevent or treat oral diseases in patients of any age were included. PubMed, Embase and Scopus were searched to November 2019 using an ad hoc prepared search string. All the papers meeting the inclusion criteria were subjected to a quality assessment. The search identified 1597 papers; 741 were selected after removing duplicates. A total of 334 articles were excluded after title and abstract evaluation; 407 were assessed and 73 papers were full-text assessed; other 14 papers were discharged after full text evaluation, leaving finally 58 papers included. In general, there is weak evidence supporting the association between vitamins and both gingival/periodontal disease and hard dental pathological processes.