What if baby teeth could help identify children at high future risk for mental health problems, years before the onset of symptoms?

Mental disorders are among the most disabling health conditions worldwide. Yet, there remains a lack of valid, reliable, noninvasive, and inexpensive biomarkers to identify (at an early age) people who are at the greatest risk of experiencing a future mental health condition.

We are actively exploring the use of teeth as novel biomarkers of people’s exposure to early life stress and mental health risk. We are investigating teeth because they are a widely available biospecimen that don’t require any special storage protocols and are relatively easy to collect. Teeth have also not yet been studied as biomarkers in the field of mental health, even though the imprints of brain development may be recorded in teeth.

We think teeth may be a promising new tool for identifying mental health risk, including to identify sensitive periods in development. Teeth preserve a kind of “fossil record” of their growth and disruptions to that growth, like rings in a tree marking its age. More information about our research using teeth is available on teethforscience.com.