BABY teeth from children who died during the Irish famine could help predict the future health of children born today, according to new research involving North-East academics.

A team from Durham University and Bradford University analysed the teeth of children and adults from two 19th century cemeteries, one at a workhouse in Ireland where victims of the 1845-52 famine were buried and the other in London, which holds the graves of some of those who fled the famine.

They found the biochemical composition of teeth that were forming in the womb and during a child’s early years not only provided insight into the health of the baby’s mother, it even showed major differences between those infants who died and those who survived beyond early childhood.

Earlier work led by Dr Janet Montgomery and involving Dr Mandy Jay, both from Durham University’s Department of Archaeology, found similar results in people living in the Iron Age on the Isle of Skye and in Neolithic Shetland.

Dr Montgomery said: “Our work is revealing the childhood histories of ancient people at a level we simply could not achieve before. We can now identify periods of severe dietary and health stress in 19th century people we know suffered and died without access to modern medicine or support systems. Once we can recognise those signals, we can look for them in the teeth of both prehistoric and living children.

“The ability to reach back 5,000 years and reconstruct a small child's diet and health is as near to time travel as archaeologists get.”

These archaeological findings – published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology – are now being tested in baby teeth from children born recently in Bradford and Sudan. Researchers hope this could lead to a simple test on baby teeth to predict potential health problems in adulthood.