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Boosting teeth’s healing ability by mobilizing stem cells in dental pulp
- verroq 9y ago“Soon”
- sicnus 9y agosigh Yes... :( Soon is never soon enough.
- nsxwolf 9y agoIn 30 years we will have finally solved all the dental problems of rodents.
- DanielBMarkham 9y agoWho will now live forever as we have cured them of every form of cancer. I am quite conflicted about science news of this nature. "Study looks interesting!" covers 95% of these stories, but doesn't have the same jazz to it as the headlines we get. To be honest, I've consumed thousands of these stories. Not a one of them provided information that I ever found valuable. They just took up a few minutes of reading and provided some fodder for online conversation.
- jpeloquin 9y agoI recall a biology seminar speaker [1] saying (only half-jokingly) that we can already cure any disease whatsoever as long as it's in a mouse. It's just the rodent → human transition that's difficult. [1] Can't remember who exactly. Would have been at the University of Delaware, probably around 2012.
- digi_owl 9y agoThe only ones that abuse that term more than game developers are science reporters...
- z0r 9y agoi keep reading this article every few months and it's still not here yet.
- tytytytytytytyt 9y agoAaaaany decade now!
- BugsJustFindMe 9y agoFirst rule of science reporting: Instances of the word "May" should be read as "Probably Won't".
- make3 9y agoor add a 20 years delay for each conditional term
- dang 9y agoThe headlines are certainly annoying but headline annoyance is its own shallow water, so let's try to avoid getting stuck there. Not pointing at you personally—it's a collective phenom. We've updated the title above to a representative phrase from the article body.
- aidenn0 9y agoAnd "soon" is 10-20 years.
- Rhapso 9y agoI'm increasingly of the opinion that teeth just need to go. They don't heal, so all your efforts are only to postpone their decay. The pulp and nerves only serve to help them grow and then only provide a liability. Modern implants seem overall superior. If you have the money and tolerance for short-term-pain i'd advise just yanking them all and getting implants. Edit: I'd like to apologise. I was raised in a rural area without floride or proper dental care. My teeth are in a place where no matter what I do I will be losing almost all of them over the next decade. I am frustrated.
- kbenson 9y agoDo implants last longer and/or work better? My understanding is that they try to save the original tooth because implants just push the problem down the road a bit farther, but you have to replace them again later.
- wmeredith 9y agoThis is correct. Implants are no match for the real thing. They wear away your jaw bone over time. Dentures are the same way. You're just buying another decade until you have no teeth.
- aardvark360 9y agoThis is completely incorrect. I have had a tooth implant since 2001 and it has not 'worn away my jaw', quite the opposite. Teeth implants preserve jaw bone.
- nate_meurer 9y agoI've had an implant for 25 years, and the bone around it is normal.
- amq 9y agoHaving went through removing a single healthy tooth (Wisdom) I'd say that yanking 20+ teeth is a crazy endeavour.
- sli 9y agoDentistry technology seems similar to battery technology in that these developments never seem to filter down out of the lab, ever. The only thing new that's been added to my dentist visits is that little graduated paperclip looking thing that measures depth between your teeth and gums. Other than that, every dentist visit I've ever been to has been basically identical, as far as technology goes. I get that much of it works, so there's not a lot of need to throw it out, but where's the progress? My eye doctor visits add new technology regularly. Not often, to be sure, but still regularly. My eye doctor visits now are quite a bit different in many ways than they were when I first got glasses. There's a point where I started to wonder if dentists in general are worried about becoming obsolete. That's conspiracy theory, of course, so I don't take it seriously. But I do wonder all the same.
- vkou 9y ago> Dentistry technology seems similar to battery technology in that these developments never seem to filter down out of the lab, ever. What? Batteries have made enormous strides in the past two decades. Surely, you remember the days of almost everything running off AAs, which took hours to recharge (If they were even rechargable), and tended to leak their contents at the slightest provocation. Or, alternatively, you could shell out large amounts of money for lithium-ion batteries, which wouldn't hold half a charge after ~50 cycles, and which would be at 1/6th their original capacity after ~100 cycles. If anything, battery technology has been a monumental success story. No, we don't have batteries based on unicorn farts that charge in 20 seconds, and hold more energy then gasoline. But what we do have is pretty damn amazing.
- plushpuffin 9y agoBatteries have seen incremental yearly improvements of a few percent in capacity, recharge time, cost, weight, and number of recharges, which looks impressive over several years. GP is talking about the articles that come out every month or two saying "new battery with nano-particles/graphene/etc has 20x the capacity of LiOn [in the lab]."
- wmeredith 9y agoI also found this to be a puzzling analogy. Battery is improving at a blistering pace, but then again so is dental tech, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- JustSomeNobody 9y agoSo, is this better than using lasers? IIRC, the lasers also did something with stem cells to get them to heal/regenerate teeth.
- tzakrajs 9y agoI spent many thousands of dollars for crowns made inside the dentist office with 3d printing and regretted it. The crowns hurt for months because of the material they were printed with, fit poorly and half of them failed within 4 years. Sometimes new technology isn't better.
- melling 9y agoCool! I remember reading about this 25 years ago and telling my dentist. “may” and “soon” indicate another decade, perhaps two?
- RobertRoberts 9y agoWhen I was in college I had a hole on the side of my molar, it was a cavity that had started as small dot, and gotten bigger. I didn't have insurance. So I took a toothpick and cleaned out the gunk and washed it out with peroxide. (just on the toothpick) I kept it clean with a tooth pick, and intentionally swished spit around the tooth regularly. Eventually the hole filled back in. I know teeth can "heal", but I think "re-calcify" is a better term I ran into the past few years. But like anything else on your body, I think it hits a point where there's nothing you can do about it. I knew a lady that drank so much coke that it ate her teeth away, nothing that lady could do about fixing her own teeth.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jjtheblunt 9y agoThis article, in various forms, gets posted more or less annually, no?
- _csoz 9y agoWe've been conditioned to learn that soon >= 10 years (until the next 'soon' is announced). Has that changed in biosciences this decade? Edit: i see a lot of similar comments here. This hope market has become a plague
- afinlayson 9y agoThe same will be said about broken bones, and other bone based issues. I'm just hoping we will have solved ligament issues the same way, as an avid hockey player I'll need some upgrades in a few decades.
- ricardobeat 9y agoSpeaking of new dentist tech, this is something that has been bothering me (reposting from my answer above): I've been looking into root-analogue implants [1] - essentially a physical 3D-printed copy of the whole tooth, including roots. Unfortunately information is scarce (as you can see in that wikipedia page), it's not even mentioned in the main 'Dental implant' article. No drilling required, the implant is literally pushed into place after removing the tooth [2]. There is a single dentist in the entire world actively offering these implants [3], and going at it for 20 years. The idea and results seem solid, you can find several papers from other researchers confirming that it works. Last year a company announced a similar root-analogue implant (though titanium instead of ceramic) in the Netherlands, but haven't seen anything since. Current root canals are filled with 'gutta-percha', a natural latex used since the 1800s, quickly blacken and are a common source of complaints. I have a single filled tooth and it seems to collect way more plaque than its neighbors. It really feels like an ancient tribal practice rather than modern medicine. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_analogue_dental_implant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_analogue_dental_implant [2] (GRAPHIC) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR1is1XxCLY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR1is1XxCLY [3] http://www.bioimplant.at http://www.bioimplant.at
- zeofig 9y agoWill they REALLY, though?
- victor106 9y agoDental tech is antiquated and the dentists want to keep it that way so they can keep doing the same things the same way without any new capital investements so they can minimize any capital risk. In case it makes you wonder how they can keep doing that they spend more money lobbying than any other industry. They are right up there with the NRA. Suprising but true https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-unexpected-political-power-of-dentists/2017/07/01/ee946d56-54f3-11e7-a204-ad706461fa4f_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-unexpected-polit...
- 52-6F-62 9y agoI heard about this years ago! I even think I recall info coming out about results from a mouthwash developed by the Australian military that regenerated teeth. I've been waiting ever since. As somebody who has left dentists and hygienists completely quizzical about some of the mineral decay on my teeth (in spite of my praised hygiene habits), something like a periodical regenerative treatment or a regular mouthwash would make me so happy. In the interim, I've been recommended and given a Japanese toothpaste that contains some extracts of dairy (cheese?). I can't remember for the life of me what it's called, but it's supposed to help with some of the enamel and mineral issues. If anybody knows off hand what it's called. I think it begins with an M...
- IntronExon 9y agoDo you have dry mouth? Use a CPAP? Allergies that have you breathing through your mouth, especially at night? Xerostomia is a bitch, and will lead to what hire describing. Xylitol gum and something like Xylimelts can help. I speak from personal experience.
- 52-6F-62 9y agoNo dry mouth, chronically. I've been told I breath through my mouth at times when I sleep. I breath a lot through my mouth when working out as well. Thanks for the pointers. I'll look into them.
- IntronExon 9y agoBest of luck, I know how frustrating it can be when you’re doing everything right, and the dentist still has bad news.
- iamt2 9y agoI used to be that guy; brush and floss after every meal from one checkup to another, and there was still buildup. Very morale-crushing. No longer. Only habit change: I dropped net carbohydrates to 20g per day. I did that for a chronic condition, but the change in dental health was a pleasant side effect. My dentist told me he's never seen such a dramatic difference. Gum-inflammation was causing gaps between my teeth, and that receded to where he couldn't detect it any longer. I went from a teeth cleaning once every other month to once every four months, and that is only by personal choice to get what little buildup he can find (the cleanings are nearly perfunctory, about 10 minutes now). Yet my dental routine has worsened, as I no longer brush and floss after every meal (going to one meal a day at the end of the day also gave me time to brush and floss after that). YMMV. I suspect a large genetic component, and dropping carbohydrates will impact dental health for some even with a modest drop to 1-200g net carbs per day, and not at all for others even down to 20g net carbohydrates.
- mixmastamyk 9y agoI remember twenty years back a new technique where the destructive bacteria were replaced with friendly ones. Never made it to market I guess, would have made half of dentistry obsolete.
- jaggederest 9y agoYou can get it here, actually. https://probiorahealth.com/probioraplus/ https://probiorahealth.com/probioraplus/ The downside is that they weren't allowed to sell the genetically modified version, they had to derive it from natural bacteria and formulate it to be a daily supplement instead of a permanent replacement.
- CobrastanJorji 9y agoThat's amazing, I was really curious about exactly this. I remember reading an article in Wired many years ago (maybe around 1998?) that suggested that researchers had developed a bacteria that would kill the bacteria that create lactic acid and would convert the sugar to something else not harmful to our teeth. The article suggested that tooth decay would be a thing of the past by now. I was just wondering about what ever happened to that. Do the tablets work? Seems like they'd be a bigger deal.
- BugsJustFindMe 9y ago> they had to derive it from natural bacteria and formulate it to be a daily supplement instead of a permanent replacement. There couldn't possibly be any perverse financial incentive to make you keep buying their product repeatedly instead of only once.
- jaggederest 9y agoThey were facing a full FDA trial for the whole thing. Certainly a perverse incentive not to fully develop the product :) Considering how poor the sales of the tablet have been, I'm sure they'd rather be charging $20,000 per treatment. They actually sold the entire tablet business for $2m which is pretty abysmal compared to the value of 'curing tooth decay forever'
- samstave 9y agoDR.: Well, thats odd - your getting a bit long-in-the-tooth... Should I regenerate you body instead?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- balnaphone 9y agoThere is a product called Novamin that can help remineralize teeth, currently owned by GSK. They took the competition out of the marketplace, and AFAIK only put it in certain "Sensodyne Repair & Protect" toothpastes, which also contain fluoride; unfortunately it isn't available in USA, but is available in Canada, Thailand, and China (and probably other places also, that's just where I've purchased it). Another source is SHY-NM toothpaste which is sold only in India. One can brush with these toothpastes, or use a dental tray to soak the teeth in Novamin. Above age 35 or so, rather than direct dental caries, the bigger risk for many people is receding gums (gingival recession), which also leads to tooth decay, hot/cold sensitivity, tooth loss, infection, and so on. To try and prevent this, people go to their dentist for scaling and root planing ("conventional periodontal therapy"), which are fancy terms for what is, to me, medieval treatment -- scraping the teeth with metal instruments that readily damage the enamel and dentin. I believe Periogen is a far superior alternative, which is administered using a waterpik and is able to reach significantly below the gumline. Periogen dissolves dental calculus chemically, without the risk of damage that comes with the instruments used in conventional periodontal therapy. Another treatment that promotes healthy gums and discourages tooth decay are probiotic lozenges; the exact formulation differs from brand to brand, but in general the idea is to replenish the microbial colonies in the mouth with species that are helpful rather than harmful. As far as I can tell, the simplest and most effective preventative measure against cavities is to vigorously wash the mouth out with water after eating or drinking anything, every time, no exceptions.
- softawre 9y agoPraise Novamin. You can buy it on Amazon, they will ship to the US. https://www.amazon.com/Sensodyne-repair-protect-novamin-pack/dp/B00RZ2OB5Q https://www.amazon.com/Sensodyne-repair-protect-novamin-pack...
- matte_black 9y agoI've never had a cavity or major repair procedure for my teeth, and I don't understand why. I'm not particularly obsessive about my teeth. Are cavity resistant teeth some kind of genetic trait? Does drinking milk regularly maintain healthy teeth?
- s0rce 9y agoLikely a large genetic component. Also the bacteria in your mouth could (possibly also due to your own genetics) be different. I've also never had a cavity filled, I'm 32 and have one spot on an x-ray that dentists disagree on so I've left it.
- lj3 9y agoWhat's your diet like? There's some evidence that the microbiome of your gut affects tooth decay (or the lack of it, in your case).
- s0rce 9y agoPretty normal "healthy" american diet, I guess. I eat meat and most other things. try to eat healthy whole foods and less processed stuff. Rarely drink soda but do eat sweets a few times per week
- lj3 9y agoWhat's your diet like? > Does drinking milk regularly maintain healthy teeth? Calcium helps remineralize your teeth.
- bluthru 9y agoThe bacteria that produce acid that wears down your teeth might not be present in your mouth.
- untilHellbanned 9y agoA GSK3 antagonist, lithium, treats bipolar disorder. It's a small world in drug development.
- whatever1 9y agoAh dentists. Following the same sophisticated techniques for the past 3,000 years. If something is in pain just chop it / remove it.
- westurner 9y agoTideglusib https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tideglusib https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tideglusib > "Promotion of natural tooth repair by small molecule GSK3 antagonists" https://www.nature.com/articles/srep39654 https://www.nature.com/articles/srep39654 > [...] Here we describe a novel, biological approach to dentine restoration that stimulates the natural formation of reparative dentine via the mobilisation of resident stem cells in the tooth pulp.