Breast and Bottle Feeding as Risk Factors for Dental Caries-Review

Abstract

During the past few years, researchers have given a considerable amount of attention to analyze the relationship between breast feeding, bottle feeding and dental caries. It is important to understand the role played by breast feeding and bottle feeding in the development of dental caries in children. This in turn makes it easier for the dentists, parents and care takers and helps them understand the children better, prevent them from diseases and also to develop public health codes. There is evidence to support the many health benefits related to breast feeding but researches are being carried out to establish a link between these two feeding types and dental caries. The aim of this review is to summarize, evaluate and analyze scientific literature and discuss the risk of dental caries that can be caused by breast and bottle feeding methods. Articles related to this topic collected from electronic database such as PubMed, Google scholar etc. It was shown in a meta-analysis of cross sectional studies that children who were breastfed were less affected by dental caries than those who were bottle fed. Majority of the studies show that children who were bottle fed were more prone to caries than those who were breast fed. Some studies indicated that no such link between the two feeding methods was found. Therefore, the current scientific literature state that breastfeeding can provide protection against early childhood dental caries in children.