Obesity Can Affect Orthodontic Treatment, Dental Researchers Claim
Dental researchers at King’s College London have sensationally claimed that obesity could increase the movement of teeth.
In a report published in the Journal of Dental Research, Dr HF Saloom of the Dental Institute of King’s College, London revealed that when measuring the difference between the progressions of tooth movement during orthodontic treatment that the group with a Body Mass Index (BMI) classified as obese saw a significant displacement of teeth during the first week of treatment and increased tooth movement during the alignment phase.
The study concerned two groups of young people, one of which was of normal weight, the other classified as obese. They both underwent orthodontic treatment and alignment rates were reported at each weekly appointment until the completion of treatment.
Having removed confounding factors, the hypothesis is that there is a connection between pro-inflammatory markers in obese young people and the rate of movement of teeth, with implications for long term oral health and long term success of orthodontic treatment, which further research could explore.
There are caveats with this study however. The first is that the two groups are still currently in treatment and the research team will be following up their treatment until the completion of treatment. While there was an average reduction of treatment time for obese patients of an average of 23 days, this was not considered statistically significant, so it may not stand to reason that obesity will reduce the time spent wearing braces.
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