Plaque-resisting dental material kills microbes

Dental materials used to repair cavities can themselves cause problems. The sticky film of bacteria known as plaque can build up just as easily on their surface as it can on tooth enamel; and once there, the bacteria produce acid that can attack the enamel adjacent to the filling. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have now developed a dental material that, they claim, will not have this problem.

Previous attempts at making plaque-resistant dental materials have focused on incorporating a drug active ingredient into the material, but this can have unwanted side-effects, the team said.

The amount of drug in the material needs to be quite high, and this can damage cells in the gum; moreover, incorporating these compounds into the material can weaken its structure, rendering it ineffective as a repair agent.

“Dental biomaterials such as these need to achieve two goals,” said Geelsu Hwang, a researcher at Penn’s medical school who collaborated on the project. “First, they should kill pathogenic microbes effectively, and, second, they need to withstand severe mechanical stress, as happens when we bite and chew.”