Dental development is defined as a progressive and continuous process determined by epithelial-mesenchymal interactions and controlled by genetic, epigenetic and environmental factors over time. In this thesis we built three main objectives.
The _first objective_ was to assess whether early life determinants indicate variations of dental development in Childhood.
The _second objective_ was to study the role of the most common dental related problems on the developing dentition.
The _third objective_ was to examine the direct and indirect genetic implications in disturbed dental development.
The manuscripts of this thesis are conducted in the general and clinical population. Data in the general population was collected from two cohorts, the Generation R Study and the Nijmegen Growth Study. To extend our research on disturbances of dental development, we collected data from three University Medical Centers and two private clinical centers.
In this thesis we concluded that early life determinants including ancestral background and maternal nutritional biomarkers are ass
