RESEARCH into Victorian babies' teeth could help predict the future health of today's children.

A team of scientists from the universities of Bradford and Durham analysed the teeth of children and adults from two 19th century cemeteries.

One was at a workhouse in Ireland where famine victims were buried and the other in London, which has graves of some of those who fled the Irish famine, from 1845 to 1852.

The research found the biochemical composition of teeth forming in the womb and during a child’s early years gave an insight into the health of the baby’s mother.

It also showed major differences between those infants who died and those who survived beyond early childhood.

Dr Julia Beaumont, lead researcher at Bradford’s School of Archaeological Sciences, now hopes the findings from the historical graves can be used to help children in the future.

She is now testing the teeth of children involved in the Born in Bradford project, a study of 13,500 children, born between 2007 and 2010, whose health is being tracked from pregnancy through childhood and into adult life.

She hopes to link nitrogen and carbon isotope levels to the medical history of the mother and the future health of the children.

Dr Beaumont said: "We know that stress and poor diet in mothers, both during pregnancy and after birth, can have an impact on a child’s development.

"In the past that could mean a child didn’t survive, now it’s more likely to mean a child has a greater risk of health issues in later life.

"While sometimes there are obvious signs of maternal stress in the baby at birth, such as a low birth weight, that isn’t always the case.

"So a simple test on teeth that are naturally shed by children as they grow could provide useful information about future health risks.

"If we can show that baby teeth, which are lost naturally, provide markers for stress in the first months of life, we could have an important indicator of future health risks, such as diabetes and heart disease."

Levels of carbon and nitrogen isotopes within bone and teeth change with different diets, so baby teeth can reveal clues about the diet of the mother during pregnancy and the diet of the child immediately after birth.

Each layer of the tooth shows around four months’ growth, starting in the womb, meaning it can be linked to a specific period of a baby’s life.

These also show when a baby has been breastfed – seen as a healthy start in life.

Nitrogen isotope levels are higher in people on protein rich diets and in breastfed babies, and lower for vegetarian diets.

However, in the samples taken from the famine cemetery, the results showed the babies with higher nitrogen isotope levels at birth did not survive into adulthood.

Those who did survive had lower and more stable nitrogen isotope levels throughout early childhood.