Research assistant Yann Heuzé's coauthored a paper titled: Secular change in the timing of dental root maturation in Portuguese boys and girls" has just been accepted for publication in the American Journal of Human Biology. The coauthors of the paper are: Hugo FV Cardoso from the Universidade de Lisboa, Museu
Nacional de Historia Natural - Departamento de Zoologia e Antropologia
&
Centro de Biologia Ambiental - Portugal and Universidade do Porto,
Faculdade de
Medicina - Portugaland and Paula Julio from the Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Medicina Dentaria -
Portugal
Abstract:
Although secular changes in human growth are frequently
reported in the literature, a secular trend in dental maturation has not been
consistently shown to date. Objectives, in this study, we compare root
formation in a modern sample of living Portuguese children (n=521), between 6
and 18 years of age, with that of a similar sample of known sex and age
Portuguese child skeletons (n=114), who lived half a century earlier, to assess secular change in
dental maturation. Methods, the roots of seven developing permanent
mandibular teeth were assessed for their maturation in both samples. The median
age-of-attainment of root stages was calculated using logistic regression and
compared between the samples. The potential influence of mortality bias in root
development of the skeletal sample is tested. Results, no mortality bias
effect was detected. We find that the dentition of modern Portuguese boys and
girls mature on average 1.22 years and 1.47 years earlier, respectively,
compared to their counterparts born one half a century before. Our results also
suggest that an earlier timing of attainment of root formation maturational
stages was not accompanied by a change in the overall duration of root
formation. Conclusions, we demonstrate a clear and consistent
acceleration in dental root maturation due to secular changes and show that the
plasticity in dental development in response to environmental factors is greater
than previously thought.
