Table 1.

Acquisition time and prevalence

Age of child's initial colonization	Number of children with new S. mutans acquisitions	Total number of children with S. mutans
4 months	0	0
8 months	2	2
12 months	13	15
16 months	8	23a
Not yet colonized	17	17

New colonization represents the number of children from whom S. mutans colonies are first isolated at a given time point. The total number of children with S. mutans is the cumulative number of colonized children at each time point.

^aOne child died between the 12 and 16 months sampling time point.