Two anthropologists at McMaster have discovered that our teeth hold clues to whether we’re getting enough vitamin D
Show us your dental X-rays, say McMaster University reearchers
Two McMaster anthropologists have discovered that our teeth hold clues to whether we’re getting enough vitamin D — a finding that has major implications for diagnosing deficiency, a serious but often hidden condition.
“Show us your dental X-rays and we will tell you whether you had vitamin D deficiency during your childhood,” said McMaster anthropologist Megan Brickley, who coauthored the recent study with colleague Lori D’Ortenzio.
While researching archeological teeth, the pair discovered a link between vitamin D deficiency and the shape of our “pulp horns,” the black area inside the tooth that’s visible on an X-ray. They found that people who had rickets or vitamin D deficiency — both hundreds of years ago and today — have abnormally shaped pulp horns.
This means that vitamin D deficiency in modern-day patients can be seen on a simple dental X-ray. Since the consequences of vitamin D deficiency can be severe, knowing who has had a deficiency can help these individuals increase their vitamin D intake to avoid further health problems.
Brickley and D’Ortenzio started their research with archeological teeth. They used 25 teeth from several different burial grounds, including four different cemeteries in Quebec (where they found a subject they call “Quebec Man,” who died at 23 after four different periods of rickets). They also used teeth from a cemetery in France that had been in use from around 1200 to 1700.
The pair found that our teeth provide a permanent record of our vitamin D intake during childhood and adolescence, the two periods of our lives when our teeth undergo a major growth spurt. As children grow, dentin — the material that makes up their tooth — doesn’t remodel like bones do.
“It’s more like tree rings, where you get a record of good and bad years,” Brickley said.
However, like tree rings, this information had only been available by cutting the teeth and looking at the deformities in the dentin under a microscope. Since archeological teeth are precious resources, the pair began to look for alternate signs that would show vitamin D deficiency to glean which teeth would be good candidates to cut.
That’s when they discovered that pulp horn shape is an indicator of vitamin D deficiency. Normal pulp horns almost look like cat ears, while vitamin D deficient pulp horns look more like a hard-backed chair.
As part of their research, they also used 29 modern-day teeth sourced from dentists around the Hamilton area as controls. They discovered that three of those modern-day teeth had abnormal pulp
horn shapes, and after blood tests, discovered that these subjects were also vitamin D deficient.
This discovery also has modernday implications for everyone from night shift workers to parents. D’Ortenzio says that parents should try to achieve a proper balance between applying sunscreen to their children and exposing them to the sun.
“We’re told that “your infants and children should not be in the sun,” and we sort of dip them in sunscreen,” said D’Ortenzio. “Now, it’s sort of important to allow a little bit of sun.”