Dental development assessed by tooth counts and its correlation to somatic development during puberty

The relationship between the emergence of each of 28 permanent teeth and various maturity indicators of pubertal growth, skeletal and pubertal development was analysed in a prospective longitudinal study of 212 randomly selected Swedish children. The correlation between dental and somatic development was low in both sexes. However, there was a distinct sex-specific pattern in the relationship between dental development and somatic development at puberty. In girls there was a consistent and statistically significant correlation between development of the entire permanent dentition and somatic development at puberty. In boys, on the other hand, dental development occurred almost independently of somatic development at puberty. There was no tendency towards a closer correlation between dental and somatic maturity indicators occurring close together in time and the magnitude of the correlation coefficients of the dental and somatic indicators was independent of their relation in time to the maximum steroidal differentiation.