The dental age in the child with coeliac disease

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ABSTRACT

Aim

The coeliac disease deprives affected individual of the main nutritive factors, which are essential to promote
body development: coeliac children are often subject to weight loss and have a lower somatic growth rate compared to
healthy children. In addition, it is proven that prolonged malnutrition can have irreversible effects on dental eruption: teeth
development also suffers a delay or it is slowed down in coeliac children. The purpose of this study was to evaluate and
quantify the persistence of a delay in the dental age in children with coeliac disease and the presence of a possible constant
relationship between the estimated delay in skeletal development and that referred to the dental age. MATERIALS AND

Methods

Seventy children (24 males and 46 females) were selected, all affected by coeliac disease, aged between 5.3 and
13.8 years, with a mean age of 9 years 22 months SD. Through teleradiography of the skull in latero-lateral
projection and orthopantomography of the dental arches, the estimate of the skeletal development and dental age was
carried out for each patient, applying two specific methods extensively described in the literature. RESULTS AND

Conclusion

The results obtained, in agreement with the literature, show how the dental age, which is delayed in children
affected by coeliac disease, may be considered as a reliable indicator of somatic growth and also of biological age.
Furthermore, a gluten-free diet has considerable beneficial effects on skeletal development in relation to the dental age, in
agreement with the hypothesis that dental development is controlled by different regulatory mechanisms, totally independent
from those that influence skeletal development and the somatic and sexual development of the individual, even if the delay of
dental development decreases progressively from the time of diagnosis of coeliac disease to introduction of a gluten-free
diet.

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