Adverse childhood experiences or ACEs — traumatic events occurring during childhood — are common and, in many individuals, have long-term consequences, affecting vulnerability to chronic medical problems, mental illness, and substance use. Because exposure to childhood adversity is ubiquitous, there is an urgent need to understand why some individuals are more susceptible to childhood adversity than others. Erin Dunn, ScD MPH is a social and psychiatric epidemiologist whose research has focused on understanding how these early exposures lead to mental illness, with the goal of translating this information into population-based strategies which could mitigate the negative consequences of adversity and prevent the onset of psychiatric illness.
One of the challenges in doing this research has been finding an accurate and objective measure of adversity. Most studies rely on parental reports of adverse events, which may be limited by recall and are likely to have certain biases. Dr. Dunn and her team have taken a novel approach to the study of childhood adversity and have recently started looking at children’s teeth to better understand exposure to adversity during the early years of the child’s life.
In humans, primary or baby teeth start to develop before birth (at around 6 to 8 weeks of gestation) and continue to accumulate layers of enamel during pregnancy and the early years of the child’s life. Like the rings of a growing tree, these layers of enamel reveal what the child has been exposed to — environmental toxins, chemicals, nutritional deficiencies, as well as adverse life experiences. In response to stressful events, “stress lines” appear — disruptions in the layers of enamel — which can help researchers identify which children have experienced significant adversity and can also pinpoint the timing of these exposures.
How Can We Use This Information?
Because more than half of mental health disorders emerge before early adolescence, identifying at-risk children at an early age is essential for the implementation of strategies designed to mitigate risk of psychiatric illness. Children typically begin to shed their baby teeth around 6 years of age. In the future, children’s exfoliated teeth could be collected by pediatricians or dentists during routine checkups and then sent to specialized laboratories for analysis. The teeth could be examined to detect adverse exposures that would be otherwise difficult to assess. In turn, the results could help identify children at risk and direct them toward evidence-based intervention programs, long before the onset of mental health symptoms.
In several recent articles and interviews (listed below), Dr. Dunn discusses how this interesting approach to studying childhood adversity got started, and she discusses how this research might bring us to a new place in terms of being able to actually prevent the onset of mental illness.
The Dunn Lab is now recruiting mothers and their children to participate in several studies examining the impact of early exposure to adversity on child development. The Dunn Lab are now recruiting women who have experienced different types of stressors during pregnancy or the first two years of the child’s life.
You can learn more about Dunn’s research on the Teeth for Science website.
Read More
Mahoney P, McFarlane G, Loch C, White S, Floyd B, Dunn EC, Pitfield R, Nava A, Guatelli-Steinberg D. Dental biorhythm is associated with adolescent weight gain. Commun Med (Lond). 2022 Aug 22;2:99.
Mountain RV, Zhu Y, Pickett OR, Lussier AA, Goldstein JM, Roffman JL, Bidlack FB, Dunn EC. Association of Maternal Stress and Social Support During Pregnancy With Growth Marks in Children’s Primary Tooth Enamel. JAMA Netw Open. 2021 Nov 1; 4(11):e2129129.
In the News
Your baby teeth can reveal volumes about your health as a child, researchers say (ABC News)
The Secret Lives of Baby Teeth (Vox)
Baby teeth may be window to child’s risk of mental health disorders (Harvard Gazette)
Children’s Teeth May be a Strong Indicator of Future Mental Health Issues (Boston Magazine)
How Baby Teeth Could Help Predict Mental Disorders (Discover Magazine)
Erin Dunn, ScD MPH is a social and psychiatric epidemiologist, Director of the Dunn Lab, an dAssociate Professor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She is a member of the Psychiatric and Neurodevelopmental Genetics Unit at Mass General and an affiliated faculty member of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. Her research laboratory uses interdisciplinary approaches to better understand the social and biological factors influencing the etiology of psychiatric cisorders with the goal of identifying the causal mechanisms underlying risk and using this knowledge to develop population-based strategies for prevention.
