Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), Burgos, Spain.
Department of Anthropology, Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States of America.
PeerJ. 2024 Jul 9;12:e17614. doi: 10.7717/peerj.17614. eCollection 2024.
Intraoral scanners are widely used in a clinical setting for orthodontic treatments and tooth restorations, and are also useful for assessing dental wear and pathology progression. In this study, we assess the utility of using an intraoral scanner and associated software for quantifying dental tissue loss in non-human primates. An upper and lower second molar for 31 captive hamadryas baboons () were assessed for dental tissue loss progression, giving a total sample of 62 teeth. The animals are part of the Southwest National Primate Research Center and were all fed the same monkey-chow diet over their lifetimes. Two molds of each dentition were taken at either two- or three-year intervals, and the associated casts scanned using an intraoral scanner (Medit i700). Tissue loss was calculated in by superimposition of the two scans followed by subtraction analysis. Four individuals had dental caries, and were assessed separately. The results demonstrate the reliability of these techniques in capturing tissue loss data, evidenced by the alignment consistency between scans, lack of erroneous tissue gain between scans, and uniformity of tissue loss patterns among individuals (, functional cusps showing the highest degree of wear). The average loss per mm per year for all samples combined was 0.05 mm (0.04 mm for females and 0.08 mm for males). There was no significant difference in wear progression between upper and lower molars. Substantial variation in the amount of tissue loss among individuals was found, despite their uniform diet. These findings foster multiple avenues for future research, including the exploration of wear progression across dental crowns and arcades, correlation between different types of tissue loss (, attrition, erosion, fractures, caries), interplay between tissue loss and microwear/topographic analysis, and the genetic underpinnings of tissue loss variation.
口腔内扫描仪广泛应用于正畸治疗和牙齿修复的临床环境中，也可用于评估牙齿磨损和疾病进展。在这项研究中，我们评估了使用口腔内扫描仪及其相关软件来量化非人类灵长类动物牙齿组织损失的效用。我们对 31 只圈养的阿拉伯狒狒（）的上下颌第二磨牙进行了评估，以了解牙齿组织损失的进展情况，共涉及 62 颗牙齿。这些动物是西南国家灵长类动物研究中心的一部分，它们一生中都吃相同的猴子饲料。每隔两年或三年，对每颗牙齿的上下颌都进行两次模具制作，并使用口腔内扫描仪（Medit i700）对相关的模型进行扫描。通过两次扫描的叠加和减法分析来计算组织损失。有 4 只动物患有龋齿，对其进行了单独评估。结果表明，这些技术在捕获组织损失数据方面具有可靠性，这表现在扫描之间的对齐一致性、扫描之间不存在错误的组织增加以及个体之间的组织损失模式的一致性（，功能尖显示出最高的磨损程度）。所有样本的平均每年每毫米损失量为 0.05 毫米（女性为 0.04 毫米，男性为 0.08 毫米）。上颌和下颌磨牙的磨损进展没有显著差异。尽管个体的饮食均匀，但仍发现个体之间的组织损失量存在很大差异。这些发现为未来的研究提供了多种途径，包括探索牙齿冠和牙弓的磨损进展、不同类型的组织损失（，磨耗、侵蚀、骨折、龋齿）之间的相关性、组织损失与微观磨损/地形分析之间的相互作用以及组织损失变异的遗传基础。
