Relationship between pre-natal factors, the perinatal environment, motor development in the first year of life and the timing of first deciduous tooth emergence

Abstract

Background: The emergence of deciduous teeth, despite being genetically determined, shows significant correlation with the pre-natal environment, maternal factors, method of infant feeding and also family socioeconomic status. However, reported results are often contradictory and rarely concern healthy, full-term children.

Aim: The objective of this study was to evaluate the influence of pre-natal and maternal factors as well as the method of infant feeding on the timing of first deciduous tooth emergence in healthy, full-term infants and to examine the relationship between the psychomotor development rate and the age at first tooth.

Subjects and methods: The database contained 480 records for healthy, term-born children (272 boys and 208 girls born at 37–42 weeks of gestation) aged 9–54 months. Multiple regression analysis and multi-factor analysis of variance were used to identify significant explanatory variables for the age at first tooth.

Results: The onset of deciduous tooth emergence is negatively correlated with birth weight and maternal smoking during pregnancy and positively correlated with breastfeeding and the age at which the child begins to sit up unaided. These factors have an additive effect on the age at first tooth.

Conclusion: An earlier onset of tooth emergence in children exposed to maternal smoking during pregnancy seems to provide further evidence for disturbed foetal development in a smoke-induced hypoxic environment.

• Birth weight
• maternal smoking
• breastfeeding
• smoke-induced hypoxic environment

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Prof. Maciej Henneberg from the University of Adelaide for advice on the form of the manuscript. We are also grateful to the Editor and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.