Breastfeeding and early childhood caries - a systematic review

Objective
A systematic review of the literature on the relationship of breast-feeding early childhood caries.

Material and methods
Electronic databases PubMed, EMBASE, and MEDLINE were searched resulting in 8 positions that met the inclusion criteria - 1 cluster-randomized clinical trial and 7 observational studies. The risk of bias was evaluated with Cochrane ACROBAT-NRSI and the quality assessed using Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS).

Results
All analyzed studies were at high risk of bias due to confounding factors affecting the intervention and interpretation of results. Six studies were rated as moderate quality (≥5 stars in NOS), and the rest as poor quality.

Conclusions
Basing on performed analysis the time of weaning to reduce the risk of early childhood caries cannot be accurately defined. However, in the presence of maxillary incisors it should be advised to limit the breastfeeding at night and before daytime naps and tooth brushing after a meal should be recommended to overcome potential cariogenicity of human milk in the case of reduced secretion of saliva during sleep.