Juvenile recurrent parotitis: Soft foods contribute to the delayed development of salivary glands

Background: Juvenile recurrent parotitis (JRP) is the second-most common childhood disease of the salivary glands after mumps. Since popularisation of mumps vaccination, children suffered from JRP more often, and the aetiology remains unclear. Chinese children had the habit of soft foods due to the special dietary habit of Asia.

Objectives: To clarify whether mastication was related to the pathogenesis of JRP and whether the growth of salivary glands was influenced by soft diet.

Methods: Investigation of dietary habit and masticatory efficiency from 2015 to 2018 of children diagnosed with JRP compared with the normal children by the dentition. Mice had been fed a soft diet beginning in their development phase. The gland weight, amount of saliva, salivary amylase, histological and ultrastructural observation and the expression levels of EGF, FGFr2 and Wnt3a had been tested.

Results: The JRP children preferred soft foods and had a significantly lower masticatory efficiency than do normal children. When normalised by body weight, the gland weight, amount of saliva and amount of salivary amylase in the experimental group were significantly lower. The ultrastructural results showed that the acinar cells in the experimental groups were smaller and contained fewer electron-dense secretory granules than those in the control groups. The expression levels of EGF, FGFr2 and Wnt3a in the salivary glands of mice in the experimental groups were significantly lower than those of mice in the control groups.

Conclusion: The soft diet indeed influenced the salivary gland through insufficient mastication, which could be one of the primary factors inducing JRP.