True: The Boy with 526 Teeth
The Claim
A 7-year-old boy in India was found to have over 526 teeth.
News posted on
Emerging story
In 2019, CNN published an article about an odd occurrence in the city of Chennai, India. After being examined in a hospital, a boy was found to have over 500 teeth growing in his mouth. The pure strangeness of this news has allowed it to remain a common repost ever since. According to a quick Twitter search, it was posted three times in November 2020. This has prompted many to wonder if this news is real.
Misbar’s Analysis
Unfortunately, this news is indeed real. The boy had a sac in his mouth where some of his teeth should be. After being surgically removed, it was found containing over 500 teeth. Most of these were quite small, but still had the appearance of teeth.
The boy was suffering from compound composite odontoma, a rare but nonetheless documented disease (warning: link contains some disturbing images). The sac removed from the boy’s was a noncancerous tumor. Like cancerous tumors, it’s a growth that contains cells that aren’t reproducing like they should. In this case, instead of spreading cancer cells throughout the body, the tumor is producing a bunch of teeth. Too many teeth, one might say. The boy recovered fine, leaving the operating room with 21 teeth.
