A preliminary study to find a possible association between occlusal wear and maximum bite force in humans.
OBJECTIVE
The objective of the study was to investigate whether moderate-to-severe attrition is associated with maximum bite force in the first molar region.


METHODS
Maximum bite force in the first molar region was measured for a total of 60 subjects having moderate-to-severe attrition of occlusal surface (experimental group) using a specially-designed piezoelectric sensor based bite force measuring device. An equal number of age, gender, height and weight matched controls (control group) were also subjected to bite force measurement for comparison.


RESULTS
The maximum bite force was found to be significantly lower (p < 0.05) in the experimental group [480.32 (153.40)] as compared to the controls [640.63 (148.90)]. While analyzing the possible etiology for occlusal wear mainly two reasons were elicited, i.e. history of parafunctional habits like use of known abrasive tooth powder (sub-group A) and Bruxism (sub-group B). However, there were many subjects in which no known definite etiological factors be attributed to occlusal wear (sub-group C). On analysing further with respect to the possibly correlated etiological factors with maximum bite force, no significant difference was found within the experimental sub-group. However, all three experimental sub-groups had significantly lower maximum bite force as compared to age, gender and BMI matched controls.


CONCLUSIONS
A significantly lower maximum bite force was found to be associated with moderate-to-severe attrition as compared to subjects without attrition. However, no specific relation could be found between bite force and possible etiological factors like history of parafunctional habits, history of use of known abrasive tooth powder, etc.
Division of Prosthodontics, Centre for Dental Education & Research, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India.
Veena
V
Jain
Vijay Prakash
VP
Mathur
Abhishek
A
Kumar
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001732:Bite Force; D002012:Bruxism / Q000150:complications; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003802:Dentifrices / Q000009:adverse effects; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008963:Molar / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D019217:Tooth Attrition / Q000209:etiology*; D014159:Transducers; D014716:Vertical Dimension; D055815:Young Adult
D003802:Dentifrices