Can the presence of erupting or exfoliating teeth increase the salivary lactobacillus count?

The salivary lactobacillus count was assessed during school attendance among 1734 7-15-yr-old children and related to the number of teeth erupting within each age group. The prevalence of extremely low lactobacillus counts (less than or equal to 10(3)) was inversely correlated with the number of erupting teeth (P less than 0.001) but the differences were small. High counts differed only by 7% between ages with the lowest and the highest mean number of erupting or exfoliating teeth tend to elevate the lactobacillus count in individuals. On a population level the effect is small.