News to Me
I have a daily Google alert that fishes for “Asperger’s” and sends me an email. I was really surprised to read this:
She took him to the University of California Dental School for a checkup, and a dentist discovered he had little or no enamel on his teeth, a symptom of Asperger’s Syndrome that causes extreme pain. (full article) [emphasis added --ed.]
I had never heard of this association of tooth enamel and Asperger’s before. A wider Google net was cast, but I thought it was pretty inconclusive.
Does this association/correlation between thin tooth enamel and Asperger’s resonate with anyone? Perhaps I am just even more narrowly read on Asperger’s than I thought…
I just wonder about this because both my [late] Father and I have teeth with thin, fragile enamel. I don’t wish to speak for him, but I think he was probably on the spectrum too.
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June 24th, 2006 at 12:29 am
I have really GOOD teeth. And I’m quite spectrummy. No doubt about it. Never a cavity or chip or anything. They’re moving apart after 3 years of braces, but I don’t wear a retainer so there ya go.
However, I DID only have 3 wisdom teeth. And the easiest extraction my oral surgeon had ever done. Didn’t even swell.
In THAT way I’m a teeth weirdo…
June 24th, 2006 at 12:47 am
Try Googling “tooth-enamel syndrome”. The reporter could have mixed up Asperger’s with Williams’ Syndrome or any of a number of others.
June 24th, 2006 at 1:10 am
I’ve never heard of thin tooth enamel associated with Asperger’s and I’ve read lots and lots of science related to Asperger’s. I could have missed it, but I think this person is wrong…
BUT, my ex-husband and his father both seemed to have serious teeth problems. My ex’s mother’s father had weird teeth. He lost all of his first set of permanent teeth and another set grew in… that is possible, apparently… but way weird. My ASD child, though has normal enamel and so do I as far as I know. There may be a specific genetic problem that tends to cause enamel problems and also Asperger’s… but it doesn’t seem likely that that gene would be the usual cause for Asperger’s… since no one has identified a gene that all AS people have… and AS people can easily be related (like siblings) to “classic autistic” people, so the same genes probably cause both AS and “autism”…
I just found something on pubmed that said Down syndrome people have thin enamel. There’s a disorder of enamel formation called: amelogenesis imperfecta… but I don’t know how that would be related to ASD.
Interesting question, though.
June 24th, 2006 at 5:41 am
First time I hear of it too. I didn’t find anything in Google Scholar that I could access, and there’s nothing on PubMed.
June 24th, 2006 at 9:34 am
Reduced or damaged tooth enamel is associated with bulimia, but I have never seen it associated with autism/Asperger’s. Granted, many dental qualities/types are genetic. Then again, so is nearsightedness, and I wouldn’t associate that particularly with autism/Asperger’s, either.
The only correllation I can think of is that minimal dental enamel will make one sensitive to food temperatures and hard textures, and that sensory issues are associated with autism/Asperger’s. But really, that’s just confusing cause and effect. Do people pull this stuff out of their butts or what?!
andrea
June 25th, 2006 at 6:36 am
Cruising around Autism Hub from Kassiane’s Rett Devil website … my Aspie husband and my non-Aspie daughter have a genetic dental condition called amelogenesis imperfecta which causes thin malformed enamel (my Aspie daughter’s teeth are fine.) I can’t fathom any relation between the two issues. The only thing I found on Pubmed was a connection with Kohlschutter-Tonz syndrome which includes ataxia, seizures, and other “neurological impairment” such developmental delay and mental retardation. If I squinted really hard and covered my ears, I might be able to imagine someone mistakenly connecting all those dots. ??!
June 26th, 2006 at 8:07 am
I have Asperger’s, and did not have a single cavity in any of my teeth until I was 30 years old.
My autistic daughter is only three, but she also has perfect teeth, despite the fact that she has never allowed me to brush them due to her sensory issues. I would think that the complete lack of dental hygiene would have led to problems by now if she had weak enamel.
June 28th, 2006 at 7:37 am
Uh, no. My kids’ grandfathers, both of which probably had Asperger’s, had fairly normal teeth. Sensitive, yes, in the case of my father, but nothing with the enamel.
Same with me.
And my autistic son didn’t have anything odd like that noted at his dental checkup earlier this month.
July 2nd, 2006 at 5:17 am
I have Asperger’s. I can feel it in my teeth whenever I drink something really cold, etc. Before now, I had always thought it was because I clenched my jaw and ground my teeth, which had won away my enamel. Apart from that, my teeth are pretty healthy–Overall, in fact, I’m unusually healthy. But my mother has sensitive teeth, with very thin enamel (she does not have Aspergers but has a number of the traits), and her father, my grandfather, lost all his teeth by the time he was 20; I don’t know why. (My mother thinks he’s manic-depressive, not Asperger’s, however.) I don’t know if these traits are always correlated, but there might be more to the relationship than mere coincidence.
July 18th, 2006 at 9:36 pm
Hmmm. Very interesting.
My teeth were pretty good (no cavities ’til age 12,) but as I’ve aged they have become more sensitive than normal adults.
My son (who was diagnosed PDD-NOS) has horrific teeth. I remember being shocked at how rapidly they eroded. He had a baby root canal at 3.5. (And they said he had poor enamel.)
July 1st, 2008 at 5:17 pm
I had no idea that there was a relation between the teeth and Asperger’s. Interesting…
July 9th, 2008 at 1:26 am
The correlation is not really accurate. I would say one would amplify the other, but little or no enamel is not a symptom per se of Asperger’s. The writer probably drew too much in his or her conclusion on things.
July 9th, 2008 at 7:26 am
alexandria– I agree and would take the step further and say this is a classic ’seat-of-the-pants’ analytical over-reach involving the ‘correlation is not causation’ fallacy. The dentist noticed (or thought he or she had noticed) some other patients with little or no tooth enamel that were Aspies. Their statement seemed valid to them, but is, of course, not. Unless you get a statistically significant sample size, control for other variables, have a control group, etc., etc., etc.
July 16th, 2008 at 11:47 pm
It’s surprising how often a small sample observation gets extrapolated into a full-blown theory, and then takes on the “veneer” of fact (sorry, couldn’t resist a dental pun).
It’s a phenomenon that has, IMO, been made infinitely more potent by the Internet — information, whether right or wrong, gets transmitted so much faster now than it would have even twenty years ago.