ADA Forsyth Friday: Impact of maternal cortisol on offspring teeth

New research has shown that infants born to mothers with higher prenatal levels of the stress hormone cortisol tended to experience tooth eruption at earlier ages.

In the study, published in Frontiers in Oral Health, researchers at the University of Rochester, in collaboration with Felicitas Bidlack, Ph.D., professor at the ADA Forsyth Institute, assessed maternal salivary samples for prenatal levels of stress-related hormones as well as the primary tooth outcomes of 142 mother-child pairs.

The researchers found that the hormones cortisol, estradiol, progesterone, testosterone and triiodothyronine affected the number of erupted primary teeth within 24 months of age. However, higher cortisol levels were most associated with a greater number of erupted teeth at six months.

The study was recently featured in a news article from Newsweek, in which the researchers suggested that cortisol levels could play a greater role in fetal growth, mineral metabolism, vitamin D and calcium regulation and an infant’s developmental timeline. In future studies, they plan to explore the relationship between early tooth eruption and developmental acceleration.