320 - Second Premolar Emergence and Adverse Childhood Events in US Children

Purpose: Early childhood adversity can accelerate biological aging, which can lead to mental and physical health challenges later in life. More biomarkers of early aging need to be identified since existing biomarkers are either difficult to detect or cannot be detected until adolescents. We hypothesized that early childhood adversity is associated with earlier second premolar emergence, which can be obtained noninvasively during routine dental care.

Methods: We used cross-sectional data from 5 consecutive cycles of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2009-2018), including ages 8-14 years old and excluding children with incomplete oral health data. Emergence prevalence was stratified by age. Associations between number of emerged second premolars and adverse childhood events (parental education, ratio of family income to poverty level, marital status, food security, and mother smoking during pregnancy) within age were tested using linear regression with appropriate survey weights. As emergence times of teeth have been shown to vary by sex, race/ethnicity, body mass index (BMI), and income.

Results: The sample had 6,410 children 8-14 years old representing over 29 million US children. Parental education, ratio of family income to poverty level, marital status, and mother smoking during pregnancy were statistically significant (P < .05) at different ages. Yet after adjusting for sex, all the adverse childhood events listed above were found to be significant.

Conclusion: Parental education has been shown for the first time to be associated with tooth emergence.