Recently I was at the dentist and I was told that because I did not have any caries at this age, I would probably not have to worry about that in the future (in contrast, I do have some issues with gingivitis). I wasn’t surprised that I didn’t have caries, I have no great love of sweet confections. I had chalked up my evasion of this dental ailment to my behavior. To make a long story short my dentist disabused me of the notion that dental pathologies are purely a function of dental hygiene and diet. Rather, he explained that many of these ailments exhibit strong family and ethnic patterns, and are substantially heritable. My mother did suffer from periodontal disease a few years back, and that has made me much more proactive of my own dental health.
As someone who is quite conscious of the power of genetics, I was quite taken aback by this blind spot. I realized that not only did I attribute my own rather fortunate dental health (so far) to my personal behaviors, but, I had long suspected those with dental issues of less than optimal habits. Obviously environment (e.g., high sugar diet) does matter. But apparently a great deal of the variation in the trait is heritable. If you are still curious, here’s a paper which might interest you, Heritable patterns of tooth decay in the permanent dentition: principal components and factor analyses.
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