Dental Development: Normal Variations and Disturbances of the Developing Dentition

Dental development is defined as a progressive and continuous process determined by epithelial-mesenchymal interactions and controlled by genetic, epigenetic and environmental factors over time. In this thesis we built three main objectives.
The first objective was to assess whether early life determinants indicate variations of dental development in Childhood.
The second objective was to study the role of the most common dental related problems on the developing dentition.
The third objective was to examine the direct and indirect genetic implications in disturbed dental development.
The manuscripts of this thesis are conducted in the general and clinical population. Data in the general population was collected from two cohorts, the Generation R Study and the Nijmegen Growth Study. To extend our research on disturbances of dental development, we collected data from three University Medical Centers and two private clinical centers.

In this thesis we concluded that early life determinants including ancestral background and maternal nutritional biomarkers are associated with dental development in children and can explain normal variations in dental development. Furthermore, anomalies and diseases affecting teeth directly, such as hypodontia and caries, can lead to delayed dental development that can be clinically relevant. Lastly, genetic implication is crucial in explaining disturbances of dental development. The more severe the condition is displayed, the more distinctive the disturbances of dental development are revealed. The severity of these disturbances in patients with oligodontia is addressed to genetic dysfunction involving directly genes responsible for dental formation and/or genes responsible for ectoderm genesis.