Talon cusp in Malay primary teeth: expression, frequency, covariates and treatment needs

Abstract

The expression and frequency of a morphological variant of maxillary anterior teeth known as the 'talon cusp' is reported in a sample of 142 Malay schoolchildren from Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The trait exhibits variable and unilateral expression in the maxillary right lateral incisors of three children, yielding a frequency of 2.1%. Trait expression was graded in nature with males exhibiting larger talon cusps (Type 1, full talon; and Type 2, large semitalon) than the affected female (Type 2, small semitalon). A comprehensive analysis of the Malay primary dentition was conducted to detect possible morphometric covariation with talon cusp. Individuals with talon cusp are not significantly different from unaffected individuals in buccolingual crown size or in primary molar crown morphology. However, two of three individuals with talon cusp possess maxillary and mandibular primary canine teeth with an unusual conical crown structure. While talon cusp has previously been reported to co-occur with supernumerary teeth, including mesiodens, this is the first report of an association with coneshaped primary canines. We address the infrequent expression of talon cusp in primary maxillary lateral incisor teeth, the presence of talon cusp in earlier and prehistoric populations, the analogous anthropological trait known as tuberculum dentale, and the treatment needs of patients with talon.

Labial canine talon cusp from the Early Holocene site of Gobero, central Sahara Desert, Niger

“…Hattab et al (1996: p. 368) broadened this definition to include 'accessory cusplike structure [s] projecting from the cingulum area or cementoenamel junction of the maxillary or mandibular anterior teeth in both the primary and permanent dentitions'. A number of recent publications on talon cusp utilise derivations of Hattab et al's (1996) definition, suggesting it has become the standard (see Halcrow & Tayles, 2008;Lukacs & Kuswandari, 2009;Pomeroy, 2009;Silva & Subtil, 2009). A further complication in the classification of talon cusp is whether features occurring on the lingual and labial surfaces are related anomalies and should therefore be subsumed under a single term.…”

“…Nonetheless, in spite of the growing number of reported cases of talon cusp, its aetiology-for both lingual and labial variants-remains poorly understood (Hattab et al, 1996;Mays, 2005;Mayes, 2007;Lukacs & Kuswandari, 2009;Pomeroy, 2009) as does the ontogenetic relationship between lingual and labial expressions of the trait. Talon cusp develops early in odontogenesis, during the morphodifferentiation stage of tooth formation (Rantanen, 1971;Hattab et al, 1995Hattab et al, , 1996.…”

“…This is particularly true for the labial form of expression. While true form, fully differentiated talon cusps are easily identified and well documented in the literature (such as Davis & Brook, 1986;Segura & Jiménez-Rubio, 1999;Mays, 2005;Sumer & Zengin, 2005;Karjodkar & Gupta, 2007;Halcrow & Tayles, 2008;Lukacs & Kuswandari, 2009;Silva & Subtil, 2009), variation along the spectrum of expression creates considerable confusion in scoring methodology (Hattab et al, 1995;Llena-Puy & Forner-Navarro, 2005;Halcrow & Tayles, 2008). For example, Hattab et al (1996) developed a standardised scoring system for classifying the morphological variation in the lingual form of talon cusp, ranging from a well defined projection that extends from the cingulum to more than half the distance to the incisal margin (type 1), to a well defined projection that extends less than half the distance to the incisal edge (type 2), to a trace expression that is nothing more than an enlarged cingulum (type 3).…”

“…In the deciduous dentition, lingual talon cusps are associated with conical canines (Lukacs & Kuswandari, 2009) while labial cusps have been associated with cleft lip and palate (Jeevarathan et al, 2005;Batra et al, 2006). However, as Pomeroy (2009) notes, cleft lip and palate are associated with a higher frequency of all dental anomalies, and the co-occurrence of talon cusp and cleft lip and palate may simply reflect a reporting bias, since treatment for cleft lip and/or palate may increase diagnosis of talon cusp.…”

“From the mouth of a child”: dental attributes and health status during childhood in Mesolithic India

“…Variation in deciduous dental morphology has been used to detect biological siblings in mortuary samples (Paul and Stojanowski, 2015). Unique attributes of deciduous dental morphology, such as the talon cusp, have been noted in prehistoric and living Southeast Asians (Lukacs and Kuswandari, 2009;Halcrow and Tayles, 2010), in an archaeological series from Argentina (Pomeroy, 2009), and in medieval Portugal (Silva and Subtil, 2009 Pathological lesions of the deciduous teeth reveal class differences in oral health in early modern Japan (Oyamada et al, 2008). Deciduous enamel hypoplasias, regarded as evidence of disruptions in growth and development, have been reported for Edo Japanese (Yamamoto, 1989) and associated with climate and subsistence change in skeletal series from Mendes, Egypt (Lovell and Whyte, 1999) and Chalcolithic Inamgaon, India (Lukacs and Walimbe, 1998;Lukacs et al, 2001).…”