Has hypodontia increased in Caucasians during the 20th century? A meta-analysis

Abstract

It has been claimed that agenesis of permanent teeth has increased over the years. The present study tested this hypothesis in Caucasians. Published data on the prevalence of children with one or more congenitally missing permanent teeth were selected on the basis of strictly imposed criteria. Using a meta-analysis, the data were evaluated and presented chronologically. Furthermore, the selected publications were checked for differences in the prevalence of agenesis between the male and female populations. Finally, information on the occurrence of upper and lower premolars as well as upper incisor agenesis was collected and calculated as a percentage of the total number of congenitally missing teeth. From 42 studies on this subject, 19 were selected based upon six stringently applied criteria. Chronological classification of the percentage of children with congenital absence of one or more permanent teeth revealed relatively higher percentages since 1957. Fourteen out of the selected studies presented data on sex distribution. In all but one publication girls tended to have a slightly higher occurrence of missing teeth compared with boys of the same age. The second lower premolars were most often agenetic, whereas missing upper laterals occurred almost equally as agenesis of the upper second premolars. The considered period of time is too short and the available data too limited to describe a possible trend in the human dentition. However, this meta-analysis seems to confirm that hypodontia has been diagnosed more often in recent studies.

Prevalence of Dental Anomalies in Saudi Orthodontic Patients

“…6,8 Dental agenesis has been reported to be the most common anomaly in the development of the human dentition and the prevalence of hypodontia varies greatly from 0.03% to 10.1% in various populations. 24 This can be attributed to different sample sizes, testing methods, geographic locations, and subject ages and ethnicities. Our results showed that hypodontia is the second most common type of anomalies among Saudi orthodontic patients, and the most commonly affected teeth were the upper lateral incisors followed by the lower second premolars.…”

Characteristics of MSX1 gene in Korean nonsyndromic cleft lip and palate individuals

“…In the general population, the prevalence of congenital missing teeth has been reported to range from 3% to 10% of the subjects examined. 26,27 Studies of subjects with clefts, by contrast, have found the prevalence of missing teeth to range from 18% to 30%, and missing teeth was found to occur approximately three times as frequently on the cleft side as on the noncleft side. [28][29][30][31][32][33] In the present study, 16 of the 36 subjects (44.5%) had missing permanent lateral incisors in the cleft region and 5 of the 36 subjects (13.9%) had missing teeth outside the cleft region.…”

Dentistry and Molecular Biology: A Promising Field for Tooth Agenesis Management

“…Since the available data are not sufficient to support this assumption (Mattheeuws et al 2004), further research is necessary to unveil whether this trend was due to more accurate techniques and patient awareness, or whether humans are dealing with a real ten- online, has indicated that MSX1 and PAX9 combined association scored 0.995, which is the highest score among presented proteins, meaning that they are highly correlated.…”