Systemic nutritional influences on enamel developmental defects

Poor nutrition is only one of many reasons enamel malformations. Enamel defect, which is common in undernourished communities is a linear enamel hypoplasia (LEH). This usually occurs in primary cutters and is characterized by horizontal grooves usually found on the labial surface, which is becoming stained post-eruptively. Several researchers have shown that the presence of enamel hypoplasia is associated with malnutrition and its prevalence increases with the severity of malnutrition. However, the specific mechanism of the influence of diet on the development of enamel hypoplasia was not understood until the 1980s, when the relationship between hypocalcaemia and hypoplasia was discovered. Hypercalcemia is a common in malnutrition and associated with diarrhoea.

Research Lady Can Mellanby in the first half of the twentieth century showed that vitamin D deficiency had a marked influence on the development of teeth. Dogs grown on diets that were deficient in vitamin D was arrested development teeth and teeth that were poorly calcified and badly coordinated.

Many teeth showed signs of hypoplasia. Mellanby include the improvement of the teeth of children in the UK in the period 1929 1943 to improve diet and status of vitamin D, including the introduction of cheap milk in 1934, providing vitamin D rich cod liver oil for pregnant and lactating mothers, infants and young children, and added vitamins a and D, for margarine. More recent studies have shown that vitamin D supplements to pregnant women has led to increased circulating levels of calcium in children at birth and reducing the incidence of hypoplasia in infants aged up to three years, compared with the control group who did not receive the Supplement. Mellanby suggested that hypoplasia teeth were more prone to rot and she performed a clinical trial in which the diet of children were supplementation with fish oil with a high content of vitamins A and D), olive oil (with low content of vitamins A and D), or molasses. In cod liver supplemented children developed less caries during the two-year period of the study. In more recent studies, canadian institutions were established with the full spectrum lighting, which has high UV radiation and thus stimulates the synthesis of vitamin D in the skin. Children studying in schools with full spectrum lighting has been found to develop less caries during the two-year study period, compared with children studying in classes with conventional lighting...