Association between Fever and Primary Tooth Eruption: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

To perform a systematic review and meta-analysis to establish if fever is associated with primary tooth eruption.

Literature searches involved Pubmed, MEDLINE, Web of Science, Scopus and Cochrane. The potentially relevant studies had the full text analyzed. Only studies concerning fever during eruption period of primary tooth in humans were included. Papers in non-English language, and papers that included syndromic patients or patients with any disease were excluded. The meta-analyses were performed with Review Manager (version 5.3). Only studies that reported the results as dichotomous data were analyzed with Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel test in meta-analysis function of Review Manager 5.3. The fixed-effects model was used to evaluate the association between tooth eruption and fever.

Search identified 83 potential studies. After exclusion of the duplicated studies, or were not related to the criteria of inclusion only 6 studies were selected for the systematic review. In the overall meta-analysis, no association was found [OR = 1.32 (0.88-1.96)] between fever and primary tooth eruption. However, in the subgroup analysis, when the method used to measure fever was the rectal temperature there was an association [OR = 2.82 (1.55-5.14)] between fever and primary tooth eruption.

There are few suitable studies in the literature regarding the association between primary tooth eruption and fever. However, our study found an association between fever and primary tooth eruption only when rectal temperature was performed.

Nemezio MA, De Oliveira KMH, Romualdo PC, Queiroz AM, Paula-e-Silva FWG, Silva RAB, Kuchler EC. Association between Fever and Primary Tooth Eruption: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Int J Clin Pediatr Dent 2017;10(3):293-298.