That stress makes you ‘age’ faster. This also happens to babies
when the mother experiences this high blood pressure condition during pregnancy. And an unexpected implication, revealed by a study, is just that even the milk teeth of babies born to stressed mothers will grow earlier. Children have 20 milk teeth, 10 on each arch. This set of teeth is important for chewing and speaking and helps maintain space for the next 32 permanent teeth. Milk teeth begin to grow in the womb around the sixth week of pregnancy and gradually emerge between six months to three years after birth. However, this the timing varies greatlydue to factors such as genetics or the general health and nutritional status of the newborn. Now, US researchers have for the first time shown something else factors that can accelerate this: maternal stress during pregnancyappropriately.
Study and results
The results of their work were published in the journal ‘Frontiers in Oral Health’. “We show that i higher levels of stress-related hormones, especially cortisolin the mother during the most advanced stages of pregnancy are associated with premature eruption of primary teeth in children“, highlights the corresponding author, Ying Meng, professor in the School of Nursing at the University of Rochester. Meng and colleagues studied a cohort of 142 US mothers from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgroundspregnant between 2017 and 2022 and enrolled at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Between the end of the second and third trimesters of pregnancy, each woman is given a saliva sample, which measures concentrations of the hormones cortisol, estradiol, progesterone, testosterone, triiodothyronine, and thyroxine. All children involved in this study were born at term. At 1, 2, 4, 6, 12, 18 and 24 months after birth, each mother-child pair goes to the clinic, where the dentist assesses which milk teeth have erupted.
About half (53%) of mothers worked, and 60% had a high school diploma or less. For the majority (76%), the child they gave birth to was not their first child, while the majority (59%) had not breastfed six months after giving birth. About half (52%) of the children were African American.
At 6 and 12 months of age, 15% had between 1 and 6 teeth, while 97.5% had between 1 and 12 teeth. All children have some teeth – between the ages of 3 and 20 – by 18 monthsWhen at 24 months 25% had all 20. In 2.7% of children, peak tooth eruption occurs suddenly between 12 and 18 months of age, whereas other children show a more continuous pattern of tooth eruption. But even at the last visit, the number of teeth is inconsistent and irregular, so the number of teeth a child has at the first visit cannot predict the number of teeth at the next visit.
The stress experienced by mothers also ‘ages’ newborn babies
It is important to note, the authors explain, that women with higher cortisol levelsstress hormones, in saliva having a child with a greater number of teeth erupting at 6 months of age. These newborns had an average of 4 more teeth at this age than newborns from mothers with the lowest cortisol levels. “High levels in the mother during late pregnancy – says Meng – can alter fetal growth and mineral metabolism, including the regulation of calcium and vitamin D levels, both of which are important for the mineralization of bones and teeth. Cortisol is also known to influence the activity of cells responsible for bone formation and remodeling.” These findings provide further evidence that prenatal stress can accelerate biological aging in children. Therefore, premature tooth eruption may be an early warning sign of impaired oral development and general health of the baby, associated with socioeconomic deprivation and prenatal stress.”
The authors also found relationship between maternal levels of the sex hormones estradiol and testosterone and a higher number of teeth appears in children 12 months after birth, but this association appears to be weaker. Similar weak but statistically significant positive associations were found between maternal progesterone and testosterone levels and the child’s number of teeth at 24 months of age, and between maternal levels of the thyroid hormone triiodothyronine and the child’s number of teeth at 18 and 24 months of age.
Estradiol, progesterone, and testosterone are known to play important roles in fetal development and birth weight; That’s why high levels of this hormone can accelerate tooth eruption.
“We still have key questions to answer, such as what maternal hormones or developmental pathways drive the change” in teething timing, “and what impact this acceleration has on the child’s overall health,” Meng concluded.
