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Sugar free candy to prevent
tooth decay
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PTI: BERLIN: Here's some good news for people who
enjoy sweet treats but are wary of tooth decay. Researchers have developed a new
'sugarfree' candy that reduces the amount of cavity-causing bacteria on the
teeth.
The candy, developed by Christine Lang of Berlinbased biotech firm Organobalance
and her colleagues, contains dead bacteria that bind to the bacteria most likely
to cause cavities.
Subjects who ate the candy had reduced levels of "bad" bacteria in their mouths.
After you eat, bacteria attached to the surface of your teeth release acid. This
acid dissolves your tooth enamel. As the enamel wears down, cavities can
develop.
Researchers said the strain of bacteria most likely to cause cavities in humans
is Mutans streptococci. When you chew, you shed Mutans streptococci into your
saliva. Swallowing or spitting removes some of the bacteria from your mouth
after you finish chewing. The remaining bacteria reattach themselves to your
teeth.
Another type of bacteria, Lactobacillus paracasei, found in the fermented
milkbased drink kefir, reduces levels of Mutans streptococci and decreases the
number of cavities in rats, researchers found. Sugar on the surface of
Lactobacillus paracasei binds with Mutans streptococci. Researchers believe that
by binding with Mutans streptococci, Lactobacillus paracasei prevents Mutans
streptococci from reattaching to teeth.
To test whether Lactobacillus paracasei could help prevent cavities in people,
Lang and her colleagues developed a sugar-free candy that contains heat-killed
samples of the bacteria. The team then tested the sugarfree candy on 60
volunteers.
After the experiment, about three-fourths of the people who had consumed candies
with bacteria displayed significantly lower levels of Mutans streptococci in
their saliva than they had had the day before, the report said. Subjects who
consumed candies with two milligrammes of bacteria experienced a reduction in
Mutans streptococci levels after eating the first candy.
By using the dead bacteria , they were able to avoid problems that the live
bacteria might have caused, the researchers said.
( Courtesy:
Times of India)
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