Breastfeeding Effect on The Genetic Variations of Primary Teeth Emergence in Relation to Salivary Transforming Growth Factor-B 1 Among Iraqi Infants

Backgrounds: Mother`s milk has many necessary nutrients and cytokines, for instance transforming growth factor b1 (TGF-b1), which all are essential for teeth eruption and development. Additionally, human milk is considered as the best source of nucleotides, hence it may have effect on genetic variations of infants.
Objectives: This study aimed to assess the effects of breastfeeding on timing of teething in relation to bone morphological protein type 4 (BMP4) gene polymorphisms, and TGF-b1.
Patients and Methods: This study is cross sectional comparative study concerning salivary biochemical analysis with prospective view concerning timing of eruption. Sample was composed of 100 breastfed infants compared to 100 infants depending on formula milk. For the biochemical analysis including, saliva was collected only form subsample infants’ groups (40 from each group). While clinical examinations and follow up for teeth emergence was done for the whole sample.
Results: Findings showed that there were highly significant differences between breastfeeding and early eruption time. While there were no significant differences between time of teething and both of salivary TGF-b1, and BMP4 gene by feeding pattern. However, there was an antagonistic effect between BMP4 and TGF-b1, especially with AA genotype by feeding pattern.
Conclusions: The current study confirmed the actual and pure effect of human milk on early primary teeth eruption in comparison with formula-milk fed infants. However, there were no effects of other factors (salivary TGF-b1, and BMP4 gene) on the timing of teething. In addition, an antagonistic effect between BMP4 and TGF-b1 was confirmed in this study.