Reliability of specific finger dermatoglyphic patterns and their association with dental caries.

The etiology of dental caries is generally agreed to be a complex problem with many indirect factors that may obscure the direct cause or causes. There is substantial evidence that heredity plays an important role in this disease. Dermatoglyphics is a study that can be used to indicate congenital abnormalities. This study sought to determine a correlation between the prevalence of dental caries and dermatoglyphic fingerprint patterns, and thus assess the reliability of such patterns for identifying a susceptibility to dental caries. The results showed that the association between people with dental caries and whorls in their fingerprints was 60.4% . The association between people without caries who had loops in their fingerprints was 55.7%. These associations had a statistical significance of P < 0.001.