According to a study in Journal of Dental Research, caries in primary teeth may cause developmental defects in permanent teeth.
A primary tooth can have caries for a wide variety of reasons such as gender, family health or history, socio-economic status, years of exposure to water fluoridation, disturbance to primary teeth, and early loss of primary teeth. Accounting for all these differences, can caries in primary teeth have long-term effect on the oral health of the child?Research says that there exists an association between dental caries in primary maxillary incisors and dental problems in their successors.
Previously also studies have tried to find out if its possible to predict dental health of permanent teeth from the caries of primary teeth. In a study conducted in China and reported in the archive of Journal of Dental Research says that there is significant association between caries prevalent in primary and permanent denture. Children having dental caries in their primary teeth have a three times more chance of developing dental caries in their permanent teeth. The study also said that caries status in primary teeth can also be used as an indicator to predict dental health of the permanent teeth.
Link: http://jdr.iadrjournals.org/cgi/content/
