Husband-wife similarities in dental caries experience.

Husbands and wives constitute genetically unrelated individuals living together, often sharing a common diet, and subjected to similar environmental stresses. Examination of resemblances in the dental caries experience (DMFT) in spouse pairs can contribute to an understanding of dental caries epidemiology in the adult (KLEIN, JADA 33: 735-743, 1946). In this study, individual husband and wife DMFT data for 1,800 spouse pairs from the Ten-State Nutrition Survey of 1968-1970 (ROWE ET AL, Pediatr 57:457-461, 1976) have been compared. Race-specific husband-wife correlation coefficients (r) were calculated for five different age groups, arranged according to the husband's age. Partial correlations were also calculated, holding per capita income constant, to exclude socioeconomic variables. In addition, DMFT correlations were also calculated on a state-by-state basis to detect spurious correlations resulting from regional differences in examination quality and coding. Husband-wife DMFT correlations were positive for all five age groupings in both whites and blacks (table). The correlations were generally significant where sample size exceeded