In some childhoods, the loss of baby teeth means a visit from the Tooth Fairy, providing children with their first monetary gains.
Several recent studies, however, suggest that baby teeth might provide children with something far greater than cash: The knowledge of their risk for developing a mental illness.
The examination of growth marks in baby teeth may help determine a child’s risk for depression or other mental disorders later in life, suggests a November 2021 study, published in the Journal of American Medical Association’s JAMA Network Open.
Doctor Erin C. Dunn, a social and psychiatric epidemiologist who is an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, is the study’s senior author. She also describes herself to children as a “science tooth fairy,” or a scientist with a keen interest in what human teeth can tell us about our health.
From the perspective of medical biomarkers – those objective, ...
