ESTIMATION OF DENTAL AGE USING HPLC-TECHNIQUE TO DETERMINE THE DEGREEOF ASPARTIC-ACID RACEMIZATION

Age determinations of adult individuals are of great importance within the forensic sciences. Presently age changes in the teeth provide goo d means for this. The best method up to now has been ''Gustafson's met hod'' with modifications. Over the last 10 years a new chemical method , based on the racemization of aspartic acid in enamel and dentine, ha s been developed. Enamel and dentine belong to the very few tissues th at do not have metabolic turn-over after formation. Both reliability a nd validity have been shown to be high, and this method therefore seem s to be the best choice for the future. However, most studies to date have been using expensive and special instruments (gas chromatographs or amino acid analyzers) for these determinations. This study was perf ormed to explore if the same determinations can be carried out with or dinary HPLC technique. It was shown that there is a good correlation b etween the ratio of D- and L-forms of the aspartic acid and age of the tooth. The correlation coefficient was 0.97, which is close to those presented with the other techniques, where r has been 0.95 - 0.99. The prediction of an individual age can be made with a 95% confidence int erval of about +/- 12 years.