byHeather Rose & Dr. Darryl Holman
Aim
* To better understand the variability of tooth emergence.
* Analyze the effects of nutrition, sanitation, and income covariates for children whose anthroprometrics were measured at two months of age.
* Analyze the effects of famine on tooth emergence on children born shortly before, during, and after the famine.
* Submit/Publish findings in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
The Bangladesh Famine: 1974-1975
* Natural disaster
* War
* Administrative and economic mismanagement
* Inflation
* Inequalities in socioeconomic relations
* Exhausted international bailout aid
* Shortages in the global food supply
* Government downplayed the severity of the crisis
* Culminated into one of the worst famines in history
* Estimated 1 to 1.5 million died
Data Collector
The International Center for Diarrhoeal Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR, B)
* Mission, "Knowledge for global life saving solutions."
* Training including: biostatistics, family planning, demographic survelance, and child survival strategies.
* Research priorities: child health, infectious diseases, vacine sciences, reproductive health, nutrition, population, HIV/AIDS, and safe water.
* http://www.icddrb.org/
Sample - Meheran, Bangladesh
* Dental records were analyzed for 397 children.
* Children were examined monthly for one year and quarterly thereafter.
* Many children were recruited at birth.
* All children were less than one year of age at recruitment.
Method of Analysis
* Analysis was by proportional hazards regression models with a lognormal distribution of tooth emergence for ten teeth.
* Observations are interval-censored or right-censored.
* Two seperate analyses were undertaken:
* Analysis 1: Effects of covariates on tooth eruption in 252 children.
* Analysis 2: Timing of tooth eruption for 397 children born before (Prefamine) during
(Perifamine) and after the famine (Control).
Results
Strong evidence that deciduous tooth emergence is affected by child's health and nutritional environment.
* Overall, famine, sanitation, income, and anthropometric measures at age two months, affected tooth emergence in a way consistent with the idea that poor health and nutrition delays the emergence of deciduous teeth.
* Tooth emergence may be affected by sanitation infrastructure through differences in the cumulative burden of disease (especially diarrheal disease) that a child might experience as teeth develop and migrate through the bone before emergence.
* Income may be acting through energy availability, so that children in poor households experience delays in emergence of their dentition.
* For six of the ten deciduous teeth, larger values of one or more anthropometric measures resulted in younger ages at emergence. The anthropometric measures serve as a proxy for a child’s health, so that these results contradict the idea that tooth emergence is not affected by health.
* Children born just before the famine showed delayed emergence, whereas children born during the famine showed no consistent effects. A plausible interpretation is that fetuses were relatively buffered in utero from the nutritional stresses experienced by their mother during the famine.
Special Thanks
Dr. Darryl Holman, ICDDR,B, and UW Anthropology Honor's Panel
Aim
* To better understand the variability of tooth emergence.
* Analyze the effects of nutrition, sanitation, and income covariates for children whose anthroprometrics were measured at two months of age.
* Analyze the effects of famine on tooth emergence on children born shortly before, during, and after the famine.
* Submit/Publish findings in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
Sample - Locati
on
onThe Bangladesh Famine: 1974-1975
* Natural disaster
* War
* Administrative and economic mismanagement
* Inflation
* Inequalities in socioeconomic relations
* Exhausted international bailout aid
* Shortages in the global food supply
* Government downplayed the severity of the crisis
* Culminated into one of the worst famines in history
* Estimated 1 to 1.5 million died
Data Collector
The International Center for Diarrhoeal Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR, B)
* Mission, "Knowledge for global life saving solutions."
* Training including: biostatistics, family planning, demographic survelance, and child survival strategies.
* Research priorities: child health, infectious diseases, vacine sciences, reproductive health, nutrition, population, HIV/AIDS, and safe water.
* http://www.icddrb.org/
Sample - Meheran, Bangladesh
* Dental records were analyzed for 397 children.
* Children were examined monthly for one year and quarterly thereafter.
* Many children were recruited at birth.
* All children were less than one year of age at recruitment.
Method of Analysis* Analysis was by proportional hazards regression models with a lognormal distribution of tooth emergence for ten teeth.
* Observations are interval-censored or right-censored.
* Two seperate analyses were undertaken:
* Analysis 1: Effects of covariates on tooth eruption in 252 children.
* Analysis 2: Timing of tooth eruption for 397 children born before (Prefamine) during
(Perifamine) and after the famine (Control).
Results
Strong evidence that deciduous tooth emergence is affected by child's health and nutritional environment.
* Overall, famine, sanitation, income, and anthropometric measures at age two months, affected tooth emergence in a way consistent with the idea that poor health and nutrition delays the emergence of deciduous teeth.
* Tooth emergence may be affected by sanitation infrastructure through differences in the cumulative burden of disease (especially diarrheal disease) that a child might experience as teeth develop and migrate through the bone before emergence.
* Income may be acting through energy availability, so that children in poor households experience delays in emergence of their dentition.
* For six of the ten deciduous teeth, larger values of one or more anthropometric measures resulted in younger ages at emergence. The anthropometric measures serve as a proxy for a child’s health, so that these results contradict the idea that tooth emergence is not affected by health.
* Children born just before the famine showed delayed emergence, whereas children born during the famine showed no consistent effects. A plausible interpretation is that fetuses were relatively buffered in utero from the nutritional stresses experienced by their mother during the famine.
Special Thanks
Dr. Darryl Holman, ICDDR,B, and UW Anthropology Honor's Panel
