Tooth Regeneration Could Replace Fillings

I hate going to the dentist, and I think most people do, too. So good news for us drill-haters: there’s a new tooth regenerative gel that “could eliminate the need to fill painful cavities or drill deep into the root canal of an infected tooth”:

A new peptide, embedded in a soft gel or a thin, flexible film and placed next to a cavity, encourages cells inside teeth to regenerate in about a month, according to a new study in the journal ACS Nano. This technology is the first of its kind.

The gel or thin film contains a peptide known as MSH, or melanocyte-stimulating hormone. Previous experiments, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that MSH encourages bone regeneration.

Bone and teeth are fairly similar, so the French scientists reasoned that if the MSH were applied to teeth, it should help healing as well.

To test their theory, the French scientists applied either a film or gel, both of which contained MSH, to cavity-filled mice teeth. After about one month, the cavities had disappeared, said Benkirane-Jessel.

Allah, the alleged original engineer of cavity-capable teeth, could not be reached for comment.

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21 Responses to Tooth Regeneration Could Replace Fillings

  1. JohnMWhite says:

    Why is it that scientists have to waste their time with research and experimentation and that sort of thing? Why do they never just have things revealed to them?

    • Danny Wuvs Kittens says:

      Because they’re oblivious. If God showed more evidence, they would STILL blindly deny his obvious existence. God could set the moon on fire, yet not let it be consumed, and put big blue lights in space that say “I AM GOD AND I LOVE YOU. ACCEPT MY SON INTO YOUR HEART SO THAT YOU MAY BE SAVED, just as he did with the faithful Moses, and yet these delusional atheist fools would not accept it. They are BLIND. They are overgrown rebellious teenagers, upset that they got spanked for playing with their cellular phones in church.

  2. DDM says:

    I don’t understand how putting gel on it will miraculously make the decay go away.

  3. Some dude says:

    But wait… I thought that mice’s teeth grew constantly…

  4. burpy says:

    Some of the commenters on the original article don´t appear too convinced:

    Either the reporter is scientifically illiterate or an incompetent journalist and/or did not read the ACS article (I did). I am a retired dentist so actually understood it. If the reporter did read the ACS article he clearly misunderstood it, which begs the question “why was he hired as a science reporter is he does not understand science?”.

    Bottom line: This is experimental pulp therapy (internal soft tissue) and would have little or NO effect on the (normally already present) hard tissue destruction of caries (cavities). Fillings will still be required.

    This sort of all-too-common reporting does great dis-service to medicine. I cannot count the number of times I had to explain to a patient why this or that badly reported “advance” was not what it was reported to be.

    Discovery: Hire some qualified reporters and please fire this pathetic example.

    • Mike says:

      I was reading somewhere (here, maybe?) that the problem with science reporting is that reporters are, by and large, arts graduates. Nuff said.

    • Len says:

      “This is experimental pulp therapy (internal soft tissue) and would have little or NO effect on the (normally already present) hard tissue destruction of caries (cavities).”

      Not so much pulp therapy then, as pulp fiction.

      • Danny Wuvs Kittens says:

        Does he look like a bitch?

      • siveambrai says:

        Even if it did restore the “hard tissue” of the tooth it can’t restore the enamel which has worn away from the cavity area. So you would still end up having to go and have that tooth sealed or face getting more cavities in the future as the bone of the tooth decays again.

        However, as an individual that has faced more than her fair share of soft tissue teeth issues (I’m going in for my 5th root canal in Jan) being able to regrow that tissue could be extremely useful.

  5. Custador says:

    Innactive decay can remineralise anyway. There’s a cream they can put on that helps which is bascially 28,000 ppmol flouride.

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