American researchers have shown for the first time that mothers who come from disadvantaged families with high levels of stress hormones during pregnancy usually have children whose first teeth come out earlier.
According to RCO News Agency, The results of a new study by American researchers show that early teething may be an early warning sign of faster biological aging due to socioeconomic deprivation and stress during pregnancy.
According to Frontiers, Children have 20 baby teeth, 10 of which are in each jaw. These sets of teeth are important for chewing and speaking and help maintain space for the next 32 permanent teeth. Milk teeth begin to grow in the womb around the sixth week of pregnancy and gradually come out between 6 months and three years after birth. However, due to genetics, geography and the overall health and nutrition status of the baby, there is a significant difference in this timing. Now, American researchers have shown for the first time that another factor can accelerate the time of teeth growth, and that factor is the mother’s stress during pregnancy.
Dr. “Ying Meng”, associate professor of “University of Rochester” School of Nursing and one of the researchers of this project, said: In this research, we have shown that the higher level of stress-related hormones, especially cortisol hormone, in the late pregnancy of the mother is related to the earlier growth of her baby’s milk teeth.
Meng and colleagues studied a cohort of 142 mothers in the United States from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds who were pregnant between 2017 and 2022 and enrolled at the University of Rochester Medical Center. At the end of the second and third trimester of pregnancy, a saliva sample was taken from each woman, in which the concentration of cortisol, estradiol, progesterone, testosterone, triiodothyronine and thyroxine hormones was analyzed.
All babies in this study were born at full term. At one, two, four, 6, 12, 18, and 24 months after birth, both mother and baby attended the clinic, where dentists checked which milk teeth had erupted.
About 53% of mothers were employed and 60% of them had high school education or lower. The baby of 76% of mothers was not their first child, and 59% of mothers did not breastfeed their child 6 months after giving birth. Approximately 52 percent of the infants were African-American.
15% of babies had between 1 and 6 developed teeth at 6 and 12 months, respectively; While the number of teeth in 97.5% of them was between 1 and 12. All babies had a number of developed teeth – between three and 20 – up to 18 months; While 25% of babies had all 20 teeth by 24 months. In 2.7% of babies, a sudden mutation of tooth growth occurred between 12 and 18 months; While the rest of the children showed a more continuous pattern of tooth growth, even in the second case, the pattern of teeth growth was irregular and unstable; So that the number of baby teeth in the first visits did not predict their number in subsequent visits.
36.6 percent of women were diagnosed with depression or anxiety during pregnancy, but such a diagnosis was not associated with their hormone levels or the number of teeth their babies had at any time point. The concentration of hormones was strongly dependent on the mother, and the concentration of all 6 hormones examined in the mothers was detected simultaneously higher or lower than the average.
Women with higher levels of the cortisol hormone in their saliva had children with more teeth up to 6 months. Thus, babies of mothers who had the highest cortisol levels had four more teeth on average at this age than babies of mothers whose cortisol levels were lower.
High maternal cortisol in late pregnancy may alter fetal growth and mineral metabolism, including regulation of calcium and vitamin D levels, both of which are essential for bone and tooth mineralization, Meng said. Also, it has been found that cortisol affects the activity of the so-called osteoblast and osteoclast cells, which are responsible for building, shaping and regenerating bone. These results are further evidence that prenatal stress can accelerate biological aging in children. Therefore, premature eruption of teeth can be an early warning sign of impaired oral development and general health of the infant, related to socio-economic deprivation and stress during pregnancy.
Researchers in this project also found a connection between the level of sex hormones estradiol and testosterone of the mother and the increase in the number of teeth of her child at 12 months, but this connection seemed weaker. Weak but statistically significant positive correlations were found between the mother’s progesterone and testosterone levels and the number of her child’s teeth at 24 months, and between the mother’s thyroid hormone triiodothyronine level and the child’s number of teeth at 18 and 24 months.
Estradiol, progesterone and testosterone play an important role in fetal growth and birth weight. This is why high levels of these hormones may increase the rate of tooth growth.
Meng said: We still have important questions that need to be answered; including which maternal hormones or developmental pathways cause changes in the timing of tooth eruption, what the exact relationship is between accelerated tooth eruption and biological aging and development, and what such an acceleration indicates about a child’s general health.
This research was published in “Frontiers in Oral Health” magazine.
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