Health: In Brief: Pregnancy, Infertility, and Infants: Feed that
baby   Wednesday, December 11, 2013  Feed that baby  Does
breast- or bottle-feeding affect how teeth are aligned?  By
Helen Fields   It's still not really clear how thumb-sucking and
other sucking affect a child's teeth, although it seems possible
they would affect the way the face develops. Researchers in
Italy looked at young children's teeth to learn more.  What the
researchers wanted to know: How do the type of feeding as an
infant and other sucking affect preschoolers' teeth?  What they
did: In 1998, pediatricians, dentists, and nurses in the town of
Cava de' Tirreni in southern Italy examined 1,130 children born
between 1993 and 1995. They also asked parents whether children
were breast-fed or bottle-fed and whether they sucked on a thumb
or pacifier.  What they found: Children who'd sucked on a thumb
or pacifier for more than a year were twice as likely to have
misaligned teeth. They were four times as likely to have an open
bite, in whic