Genetic influence on dental arch form in orthodontic patients

Human arch form varies considerably. This study analyzed the size and shape of the maxillary and mandibular dental arches of 320 adolescents from 155 sibships. A broad battery of measurements (k = 48) was computer-generated from Cartesian coordinates of cusp tips and line angles of the permanent teeth, and heritability estimates were generated from intraclass correlations, controlling for sex and age where indicated. Arch size has a modest genetic component, on the order of 50%, although this estimate may contain shared environmental influences. Tooth rotations have low h2 estimates, most of them indistinguishable from zero. Arch shape, assessed as length-width ratios, also has a modest transmissible component, suggesting that arch length and width growth factors are largely independent. Highest heritability estimates, as a group, were for transverse arch widths, which averaged about 60%. Several measures of left-right asymmetry also were analyzed (k = 31), and, while the arches are systematically asymmetric (generally with left > right), there is only weak evidence of a transmissible component for directional asymmetry and essentially none for fluctuating asymmetry. In all, arch size and shape are seen to be more subject to environmental influences than to heredity. These findings direct attention toward the need to better understand what extrinsic factors modulate arch size and shape during development.