Research Training Program

Andrea Runyan
University of North Texas
Denton, Texas

Dr. David Hunt, Ph.D.
Supervising Scientist
Department of Anthropology

"Death is no reason for an individual to cease contributing to the world."

Dental Disease: The Root of All Evil?

Epidemiological and clinical studies suggest an association between periodontal disease and heart attack, stroke, diabetes, and respiratory disease. Since these diseases affect mainly soft tissue and cause few observable changes to bone, they are difficult to diagnose in archaeological specimens. However, if periodontal disease is correlated with certain systemic diseases, it may be possible to infer cause-of-death from dental condition. To investigate this possibility, the numbers of carious lesions penetrating the pulp, abscesses, and pre-death tooth losses and the extent of bone change processes on the inner skull surface were recorded for 415 skeletal specimens from the Robert J. Terry Anatomical Skeletal Collection, a group of skeletons with recorded age-at-death, sex, race, year-of-birth, and cause-of-death. This study utilized a new measure of overall periodontal disease, termed "periodontal distress sum," which represented the number of sockets exhibiting one or more of the studied dental disease conditions. Kruskal-Wallis analysis of variance tests revealed that the periodontal distress sum differed significantly (p=0.033) between individuals who had died from myocarditis (average: 10.123) and people with a cause of death unassociated with periodontal disease (average: 8.250). Surprisingly, respiratory disease fatalities exhibited a statistically different (p=0.017), lower mean periodontal distress sum (6.241) than the control group (8.250). No significant differences were observed between the control group and vascular disease fatalities. Nor did dental disease statistics vary significantly between controls and disease groups when individuals were grouped into age cohorts. Generally severe periodontal disease and other characteristics of the Terry Collection may render it less suited than other skeletal collections for the type of study likely to demonstrate a correlation--namely one which, like clinical studies which have demonstrated correlations, accounts for even minor periodontal disease. However, the Terry Collection was exceptionally suited for this study's demonstrations that endocranial bone activity is positively correlated with both age and periodontal disease, the extent of tooth and socket loss increases in females after menopause, African-Americans in this collection exhibit better dental health and more endocranial bone activity than white Americans. These and other trends revealed by the study provoke additional investigations of the relationship between periodontal disease and race, sex, inflammation, and cause-of-death.

This research was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates program, Award Number DBI 9820303.

Letter of Gratitude