Sir, I have read the BDJ news story 'Less chewing linked to dental crowding' (BDJ 2012; 212: 10) and I would like to present a counterpoint.

We have examined an isolated indigenous population in the Amazon. One of our papers has been published in PLoS One1 and our main results suggest that genetics plays the most important role in dental malocclusion aetiology, including mandibular growth and dental crowding.

I am including an intraoral image of an indigenous person showing dental crowding even in the presence of a severe tooth wear (Fig. 1).

Figure 1
figure 1

Dental crowding in the presence of tooth wear

Full size image