Why a 7-Year-Old Had 547 Teeth
Sometimes stem cells in the jaw don’t work quite like they’re supposed to.
The tooth fairy is working overtime this week. On Thursday, a group of oral surgeons in Chennai, India, released a case report describing an already rare phenomenon at its most extreme. A young boy, just 7 years old, was being treated for jaw pain last month at Saveetha Dental Hospital near the country’s southeastern coast when clinicians realized he had 547 teeth—the most ever counted in one person.
The boy, who appears in photos shared by the hospital but remains unnamed, only ever had a standard child’s set of 20 or so teeth visible to the naked eye. (The average adult has 32.) His parents first noticed a small lump pushing up against his right cheek when their son was 3; when they took
