Alexandria, Va., USA – The International and American Associations for Dental Research (IADR/AADR) have published a special issue in the Journal of Dental Research (JDR) on orofacial clefting and dental and craniofacial anomalies. Dr. Brian Schutte, Michigan State University, East Lansing, USA, served as the guest editor of this special issue along with JDR Associate Editor, Dr. Joy Richman, University of British Columbia, Canada.
The disease burden of orofacial structural defects such as cleft lip with or without cleft palate (CL/P) and tooth agenesis is very high. With one of out every 700 individuals affected, nonsyndromic orofacial clefts are some of the most common birth defects.
From infancy to adulthood, the correction of clefts involves a series of invasive surgeries and dental rehabilitation. Dental abnormalities such as tooth agenesis require medical care in childhood and expensive prosthetic treatment. This special issue contains articles and reviews on recent scientific and technical advances in craniofacial development and genetics.
Topics in this special issue range from tooth number and root formation, human and animal genetic studies on orofacial clefting, reviews that prioritize the variants most likely to cause disease, the pathways required for palatogenesis, experimental articles on the periderm and drug therapy articles that rescue cleft palate in mutant mice.
"I am honored that I was able to serve as a co-guest editor of this JDR special issue on orofacial clefting," said Joy Richman. "We have curated an excellent group of articles covering the recent scientific and technical advances in craniofacial development and genetics. The discoveries reported in this series of articles could lead to improvements in the better diagnosis and ultimately treatment of challenging craniofacial and dental anomalies."
This special issue is accompanied by an Editorial "Face Forward: Gene Variants, Pathways, and Therapies for Craniofacial Anomalies" and a companion podcast moderated by Editor-in-Chief, William Giannobile.
To read the JDR special issue on orofacial clefting, please visit https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/jdrb/current or contact Elise Bender ebender@iadr.org to access to the issue.
