A radiographic study of tooth development in hypodontia.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the radiographic development of permanent teeth in a group of children (66 females and 69 males, aged 3.08-15.02 years) with agenesis of one or more permanent teeth compared to a matched group. DESIGN: Tooth formation of all developing permanent teeth was assessed using Haavikko's method (1970) from dental panoramic tomographs. The difference between dental and chronological age was tested using a paired t-test. The correlation between the difference of dental and chronological age and severity of hypodontia was investigated using Spearman correlation test. In addition, radiographs of all children with only one single missing tooth in one quadrant and no more than two agenesis in total (N=59), were analyzed using the non-parametric Wilcoxon sign test, in order to investigate if the development of the teeth adjacent to the site of the agenesis was effected. RESULTS: Tooth formation in children with hypodontia was significantly delayed compared to the matched group (p<0.001). The mean difference was 1.51 years (S.D. 1.37 years). The severity of the hypodontia effected the magnitude of the delay (p<0.01). The teeth adjacent to the site of the agenesis were significantly delayed compared to the corresponding teeth in the matched group (p<0.01). CONCLUSION: These results confirm that the development of permanent teeth in children with hypodontia is different when compared with a matched group.

Reactivity of blood pressure to mental arithmetic stress test, stress-test recovery time, and ambulatory blood pressure in hypertensive and normotensive subjects.

BACKGROUND: Laboratory mental stress testing and 24 h ambulatory blood pressure monitoring may analyse reactivity of blood pressure during provoked stress and stressful situations in daily-life, respectively. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate whether the responses to a mental stress test and during the stress-test recovery time were associated with ambulatory blood pressure parameters. METHODS: Fifty-two untreated male subjects (22 normotensives and 30 hypertensives) were subjected both to mental arithmetic stress testing and ambulatory blood pressure monitoring. RESULTS: We found a positive correlation between baseline and peak-test blood pressures during the stress test and 24 h blood pressures. Maximal values of systolic and diastolic blood pressures measured during the 24 h were also correlated to the maximal systolic and diastolic blood pressures reached during the stress test ( P < 0.001). We observed no relationship between reactivity during the stress test and 24 h parameters. On the contrary, changes in diastolic blood pressure during the time of recovery from the stress test (expressed as percentage-change scores) were correlated to the 24 h diastolic blood pressure parameters, the diastolic load being the most closely associated variable. CONCLUSION: The absence of relationships between variations in blood pressure during the provoked stress and ambulatory monitoring parameters indicates that reactivity of blood pressure to an acute stress does not predict the 24 h profile. However, the correlation between the maximal blood pressure measured by ambulatory monitoring and that observed during stress testing indicates that the maximal 24 h values may show the extreme blood pressure response (like the one provoked acutely by a laboratory stress test) of an individual subject. The correlation between the percentage-change score during the recovery time of diastolic blood pressure and the 24 h diastolic load could account forr a lower than normal capacity for recovery of subjects with persistently high blood pressures.