WEIRD: Twin girls born prematurely with fully grown front TEETH

Doctors were shocked to discover twin girls born prematurely at 32 weeks were born with fully-formed front teeth

The non-identical babies had to be kept in an incubator for the first 15 days of their life.

Despite being slightly underweight, overall they were healthy, and had been breastfeeding with no trouble since birth, said doctors describing their case in the journal BMJ case reports.

However they were transferred to see a paediatric dentist after their family became worried about their well-developed incisors.

When dentists examined their mouths they saw that the girls did indeed have fully-formed bottom front two teeth, which were slightly yellow and hard.

Teeth that a baby is born with are medically known as ‘natal teeth’, while teeth that erupt within the first 30 days after the child is born are called ‘neonatal teeth’.

'Presence or eruption of teeth immediately at or after birth is a rarely reported phenomenon,' doctors describing the case said.

The chance of a baby being born with teeth - or them erupting in the first month after birth  - is between one in 2,000 and 1 in 3,500, they added.

Such teeth usually develop in the lower gums and have little root structure meaning they are often wobbly.

Often, they are removed after birth as there is a danger the child might choke on them.

They can also injure the baby's tongue when it is breastfeeding and can cause a breastfeeding mother pain.

However, the girls’ mother felt ‘neither pain nor irritation while feeding’, she told doctors.

And careful examination of the babies’ mouth found no evidence of cuts or inflamed tissues due to the teeth.

Writing in the journal, the doctors from a hospital in Davangere, in the south-western Indian state of Karnataka, said: ‘It was decided to retain the natal teeth since they would not prose problems.’