Histomorphometric Evaluation of Organic Enamel Elements in Erupted Bovine Teeth. Part I. Enamel Tufts

The aim of the study was to compare erupted permanent bovine teeth of two types involved in the process of chewing in respect to the localisation and histomorphometric characteristics of enamel tufts. The research material comprised 240 fully erupted premolars and molars from the maxillae and mandibles of 27 heads of cattle from the Polish Black-and-White breed. Overall, 1,986 specimens of bovine teeth were analysed using a Nikon Eclipse E600 microscope with Micro Image v4.0 software. Enamel tufts were relatively numerous in the enamel of smooth surfaces - on average from 5.6 to 6.4 per cross-section of tooth crown. The average length of the enamel tufts expressed by means of a median was smaller for premolars (89.3 μm) than for molars (123.9 μm). The analysis of the value of Spearman's rank correlation coefficient revealed that no relationship existed between the length and width of tufts in molars (r_s =0.26), and a low-level relationship was noted (r_s =0.45) in premolars. On the basis of the Mann-Whitney U test for the metric measurements, no significant differences were discovered for the width of enamel tufts (P=0.427), but significant differences were observed for the length of enamel tufts (P=0.032). The observed differences in the histological structure of the enamel of posterior bovine teeth in comparison to human teeth indicate that a certain degree of caution ought to be considered when using bovine teeth as a substitute for human teeth in in vitro trials.