Childhood body mass index is associated with early dental development and eruption in a longitudinal sample from the Iowa Facial Growth Study

Childhood body mass index is associated with early dental development and eruption in a longitudinal sample from the Iowa Facial Growth Study Nicholas, Christina, L.; Kadavy, Kevan; Holton, Nathan, E.; Marshall, Teresa; Richter, Andrew; Southard, Thomas Introduction: High BMI (body mass index) children have been demonstrated to have precocious dental development. Existing work has largely focused on cross-sectional datasets, leaving an incomplete understanding of the longitudinal relationship between BMI and dental maturation. Methods: We used a pure longitudinal growth series to examine the relationship between dental development and childhood BMI. Periapical radiographs from 77 children from the Iowa Growth Study were used to estimate dental development for subjects with known BMI. Results: We confirm prior studies in finding that children with higher BMIs were more likely to have advanced dental development for their ages (p