title: Advanced dental maturity in children with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.
abstract: The subjects of the investigation comprised 95 girls and 73 boys with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JRA), and 102 girls and 66 boys representing healthy controls, all with a chronological age from 6.3 to 14.4 yr. The dental development was assessed from panoramic radiographs using a seven-tooth model. The radiographs were evaluated on three separate occasions with a minimum interval of one month in a randomized order, and blind with respect to absence or presence of JRA. In both JRA patients and healthy controls, dental maturity was ahead of chronological age. In addition, dental maturity was significantly advanced in JRA patients with 0.26 yr in girls and 0.28 yr in boys. It is tentatively suggested that the advanced dental development in JRA patients compared with healthy children was partly an effect of treatment with cortisone, while the influence of the disorder per se remains to be elucidated.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Dentistry, University of Turku, Finland.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Lehtinen
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Oksa
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Helenius
authors.forename: O
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Rönning
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001171:Arthritis, Juvenile / Q000503:physiopathology*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D005387:Finland; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015588:Observer Variation; D016300:Radiography, Bitewing; D011897:Random Allocation; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D016037:Single-Blind Method; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D014070:Tooth / Q000254:growth & development*; D014074:Tooth Calcification / Q000502:physiology*; D014078:Tooth Eruption / Q000502:physiology*