ArticleScience advances2025
Childhood fluoride exposure and cognition across the life course.
Article in Science advances, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Party identification and public attitudes toward raw milk, water fluoridation, and acetaminophen use.Health affairs scholar · 2026Article
- A 40-year decline in permanent-tooth caries among 12-year-olds in Japan in the absence of systemic fluoride-based prevention: public health implications.BMC public health · 2026Article
- Probing the Biological Plausibility of Fluoride as an Endocrine Disruptor.Birth defects research · 2026Article
- Municipal water fluoridation, adolescent IQ, and cognition across the life course: Evidence from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Exaggerating the risks of vaccination is a dangerous health threat.BioImpacts : BI · 2026Article
- Evidence-based water fluoridation policy.Science advances · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
How are children's fluoride exposures associated with cognitive test performance in adolescence and midlife? Whereas most prior research has estimated effects of exposure to extremely high levels of fluoride, we consider exposure to levels of fluoride within the range typical in most places and of greatest relevance to policy debates about government water fluoridation. We use data from the nationally representative (United States) High School and Beyond cohort, characterize fluoride exposure from drinking water across adolescence, adjust for confounders, and observe cognitive test performance in both secondary school and at age ~60. We find that children exposed to recommended levels of fluoride in drinking water exhibit modestly better cognition in secondary school, an advantage that is smaller and no longer statistically significant at age ~60.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.