Study looking at teeth provides evidence of lasting damage due to smoking – OXBIG NEWS NETWORK-OxBig News Network

A study has revealed evidence of how smoking can permanently impact teeth, revealing tell-tale signs that remain despite quitting the habit.

A tooth consists of three main hard tissues — enamel, dentine and cementum.

Cementum, which covers the tooth root, develops characteristic ‘rings’ — much like tree rings — that grow each year as we age, researchers from Northumbria University, UK, said.

The study, published in the journal PLOS One, looked at 88 teeth, 70 of which were obtained from people taking a dental treatment involving tooth extraction, and others from archaeological remains.

Signs of disruption to cementum rings were found in some teeth, but not in others.

Further, evidence of damage due to smoking was found in teeth from 70 per cent of ex-smokers and 33 per cent of current smokers, compared to three per cent of non-smokers.

This suggested “tell-tale signs of smoking habits” that remain even after a person has quit, the researchers said.

“Our research shows that it’s possible to tell if someone was a smoker just by examining their teeth,” author Edward Schwalbe, associate professor in Northumbria University’s department of applied sciences, said.

“We found that the regular annual deposition of rings was disrupted for some individuals and realised that these disruptions were associated with current or ex-smokers, but were very rare in non-smokers,” Schwalbe said.

The findings could help provide new insights during forensic and historical investigations, the team said.

They also found that cementum is thicker in past smokers.

This could be a result of cementum returning to normal levels when one stops smoking, leaving ‘stronger’ deposits on top of damaged rings and thereby thickening them — whereas current smokers continue to have disruption to their cementum levels, the researchers said.

Further, the 18 teeth obtained from archaeological remains dating from 1776-1890 bore “clear evidence of smoking activity, displaying staining and even notches from pipe smoking”.

Analysis of cementum showed that the rings in teeth of smokers who died then displayed the same signs of disruption as those from living donors who were current or ex-smokers.

The study could help learn about people’s past lifestyles, including in archaeological studies where patterns of tobacco use can reveal important cultural insights and how these habits affected populations’ health through time, the researchers said.

Schwalbe added, cementum rings in the teeth can also help estimate one’s age when the tooth was removed or when they died, information from which could help identify unknown individuals — such as disaster victims or those buried in mass graves.