According to milk teeth, it is possible to identify a child's predisposition to mental illness, psychiatrists have found out. They hope that their discovery will allow them to reliably diagnose possible deviations in the early stages.
Milk teeth can reveal a predisposition to mental illness in children, experts from Massachusetts Hospital found. The study was presented at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington DC.
One of the problems of psychiatry is the lack of biomarkers with which it would be possible to identify persons prone to developing mental illness. A biomarker is an objectively measured characteristic that can be used to predict the risk of developing a disease - for example, measuring blood pressure when assessing the risk of stroke.
Identification of biomarkers associated with mental problems would make it possible to more objectively and accurately assess the condition of patients and predict the risks of developing certain mental diseases.
The researchers worked with baby teeth that fell out of six-year-old children.
As it turned out, children with thinner enamel often found it harder to concentrate on something and were more aggressive.
These traits are often associated with mental illness in later life - they may indicate an increased risk of developing anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder.
“As a scientific community, we've spent decades trying to find ways to identify people, especially children, who are at risk of mental illness,” says psychiatrist Erin Dunn, lead author of the study. "Imagine that teeth can reveal this secret."
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Scientists analyzed the teeth of 37 children over six years old. They asked the parents to bring them the fallen milk teeth and then studied the enamel thickness, pulp volume and other indicators. The researchers were able to establish the relationship between the characteristics of the teeth and the behavior of children, which were reported by parents and teachers.
It turned out that the characteristics of teeth make it possible to predict behavioral characteristics even better than socio-economic factors, the assessment of which was previously considered the best way to calculate the risk of mental problems.
“We have not seen this before and did not even think about it,” the researcher admits.
Teeth begin to form at the stage of intrauterine development and, as the researchers explain, store information about what happened to children during pregnancy and in the first years of life.
So, improper nutrition of the mother and the child himself or stress affects the development of teeth and at the same time can lead to mental illness in the future.
“Teeth represent a promising new biomarker, since they store information not only about one or another of our life experiences, but also about the time in which we experienced it,” the authors of the work explain. "Just as the annual rings on a tree are associated with age, so changes in the teeth in children are associated with mental symptoms."
Anthropologists and archaeologists often use teeth to understand people's lives, Dr. Dunn notes, but they have not received much attention in psychiatry.
“What amazes me,” she says, “is the untapped potential. All this information is stored in a resource that most parents keep in a drawer or throw away."
Many children's characteristics affect a person's prospects in the future - for example, inattentive, hyperactive and aggressive children in the future earn less than their more compliant and friendly peers.
The reason for low earnings may be that behavioral problems are also manifested in school, such children study worse and, as a result, have fewer career opportunities than their more compliant peers. Also, inattention, which is often accompanied by hyperactivity, has previously been associated with an increased risk of delinquency, drug use and unemployment.
According to the researchers, children's behavior problems, and especially inattention, should be paid attention to as early as possible - this increases the chances of coping with them and avoiding negative consequences in the future.
"Identifying behavioral problems associated with economic success in early childhood is essential for developing ways to deal with them," the researchers note.