CLINICALLY evident cysts of the alveolar and palatal mucosa are apparently a very common finding in newborns and infants and are often referred to as Epstein's pearls or Bohn's nodules. The cystic lesions have been described as white, raised, multiple nodules of maxillary and mandibular alveolar ridges and midpalatal region varying in size from a pin head to 2 or 3 mm. The majority of these cysts are inconspicuous and usually only the larger lesions are noticed. No treatment of these lesions is required as they do not interfere with tooth eruption and usually disappear in a few months.Palatal mucosal cysts of fetuses and infants have been studied in detail by several investigators.1-3 Monteleone andMcLellan1 found 79% to 85% of 393 1\ x=r eq-\ day-old infants had cystic nodules in the median palatine raphe at the junction of hard and soft palates and histologic examination revealed cysts containing keratin. Burke et al 2 found cystic formation in the midline of hard palates of 31 of 32 fetuses 3% to 6 months of age and in one of four full-term fetuses. In contrast to the alveolar mucosal cysts, the cystic lesions of the midline of the palate are felt to arise from epithelial inclusions entrapped be¬ tween embryonic processes during de¬ velopment or possibly from abortive glan¬ dular differentiation or both. Monteleone and McLellan1 concluded that median palatal nodules appear to be a normal find¬ ing because of their high frequency.Although cysts of the alveolar mucosa of fetuses, newborns, and infants reported¬ ly have a high incidence of occurrence, they have been infrequently studied.4 In serial sections of the maxillae and mandi¬ bles of 17 infants, Kreshover5 found 65 cysts of which 38 were categorized as multiple and 27 as single. He states that the number of cysts was unexpected. The cysts were located in corium below the surface epithelium and were found in both anterior and posterior regions of the jaws. Several sections showed large epithelial pearl formation in varying stages of keratinization and degeneration. Kreshover states that in all instances the cystic le¬ sions were seen to arise from cells of the dental lamina. Hodson 6 in an earlier re¬ port also found similar cystic changes in remnants of the dental lamina of fetuses and infants. BhaskarT in a study of frontal and lateral sections through the heads of eight fetuses of 2 to 8 months gestational age, found that during the morphodifferentiation of tooth development a portion of the dental lamina fragmented into nu¬ merous islands of odontogenic epithelium and that cystic change was noted in some of the epithelial islands.We have recently had the opportunity to study biopsy specimens from the max¬ illary alveolar ridge and hard and soft palates of 31 newborns and infants from 2 to 417 days of age. A portion of this study was done in conjunction with the Cleft

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