Parental genetic influence on children’s size of mandibular central incisors

Previous study has shown that the size of the mandibular incisors and width of mandibular arch in daughters might have genetic influence from their mothers. Objective: To compare the mesio-distal dimension of mandibular central incisors in children and their parents in the East of Jakarta. Methods: The study was cross-sectional. 61 families with a child at 8 to 9-years-old and parents below 40 were randomly selected from an ethnic group of Deutero-Malayid living in the suburb of east Jakarta. The socio-economic background of all the families was similar. Lower plaster model were obtained from the father, mother and child for all selected families. The plaster model was scanned using Canoscan (Canon LiDE 20). The distance between the mesial and distal contact points (MD) of each of the mandibular central incisor on the scanned images were measured with UTHSCSA Image Tool program (ver 2.0). Pearson's Correlation was used to correlate MDs of parents to that of child. Result: A total of 366 scanned images of mandibular central incisors from 122 parents, 40 boys and 21 girls were measured. The mean MDs±SD mm of the fathers, mothers, daughters and sons were 10.98±0.5, 10.72±0.55, 10.37±0.8 and 10.68±0.67, respectively. There was a correlation between the MD of the daughter to mother (r=0.61, p<0.05) and father (r=0.57, p<0.05). However, the correlation between the son and mother (r=0.04, p>0.05) and father (r=0.04, p>0.05) was very weak. Conclusion: There seems to be a genetic influence on the mesio-distal dimension of mandibular central incisors from the parents to the daughters but not the sons for Deutero-Malayid.