• Archives
  • Products
  • Operative Dentistry
  • Dental Team Communication
  • Practice Management
  • News
  • Research
  • Dental Debates

DentalBuzz: a jolt of current

trends, innovations, and quirks of dentistry

  • Home – Latest Buzz
  • Bloglist
  • Indie Dental Showcase
  • Free Dental Timer
  • Practice printables
  • Podcasts

Release the (S.) mutants

February 9, 2011 By Trish Walraven 2 Comments

by Trish Walraven

The Dramatization:

At first it was small. The outbreak began in Florida’s Tampa Bay Area as local hospitals noticed an influx of patients with complaints of turquoise discolorations of their lips and aversion to simple carbohydrates. Once case histories were correlated it was noticed that all those who were affected had either recently received an inoculation of a mutant version of Streptococcus mutans at their dentist’s office or had been in close contact with someone who had.

Initially the culprit was thought to be excessive consumption of blue raspberry slushies, but by the time the CDC discovered that an organism was responsible for these symptoms and that it was bacterial in origin and highly contagious the disease had spread far beyond Florida and had affected millions throughout the US and abroad.

There have been no reports of mortality, save the demise of the soft drink and candy industries. Sugar consumption has plummeted as more of the population becomes infected by this new strain of bacteria which was originally created to cure the problem of dental decay. Because persons who are affected display a noticeable change in their appearance, blue lips have become a strong signal of exclusion due to the fear surrounding this epidemic. However, as more evidence points to the positive outcomes of having been infected, the “blue look” is currently trendy in the larger cities. Blue-lipped patrons that had been banned from public venues such as restaurants and arena events are slowly trickling in, thanks to the assurances from the World Health Organization that this current situation has actually caused more good than harm. The long-term effects will be felt by dentists, who, in the next 30 years, will see an attrition of their necessity as caries becomes extinct, and possibly within the cosmetics industry with a shift in lip color preferences.

The Reality

Um, Yay? It’s been like, since the early 70’s that everyone’s been asking for a caries vaccine. And wouldn’t you know it? A company in the United States is already so ON this. Oragenics first initiated their first Phase 1 Clinical trials in 2005 but were halted by the FDA because of the fear of something happening like the above scenario. Think I’m kidding? Okay, maybe I was being sensational. But there can be genuine risks when you fiddle with a few genes, and the FDA seemed to be mainly concerned with the lack of a plan to eradicate attenuated strains in the test subjects’ children. AHHHHH!

It starts to get interesting when you look at the solution that Oragenics came up with to begin their second Phase 1 testing announced last week: The trial subjects will be inoculated with a strain of S. mutans that cannot survive without the amino acid D-alanine, which is not found in a normal human diet. This means that the subjects will have to feed their germs daily with a mouthwash to keep them from dying.

Are you excited yet? Well, you’d better hold those horses back for a while. A long while. It’s going to take a bunch of time and a lot more money to get this to the market.

The inoculation is designed to be a painless 5-minute treatment with a cotton-tipped swab to deliver the suspension of Oragenics’ patented bacterial strain into a patient’s mouth during routine dental visits. But this one won’t die without feeding. It will live forever.

And what is it supposed to do once it goes viral? Err… bacterial? Oragenics calls this treatment SMaRT Replacement Therapy™ and it promises to:

• Offer lifelong protection against tooth decay caused by S. mutans

• Eliminate the creation of lactic acid by oral bacteria

• Dramatically reduce the ability of S. mutans to cause tooth decay

• Be genetically stable

• Grow at a rate similar to non-genetically-altered S. mutans

• Aggressively displace the native, decay-causing strains of S. mutans and preemptive colonization of its niche

• Not cause any acute or chronic adverse side effects

I think it’s a foregone conclusion that this sort of genetic manipulation is probably the only way we’ll and break caries’ hold on humanity and the loss of teeth caused by decay. We can’t just kill all the bugs in our gut – all the Jamie Lee Curtis Activia commercials have given us TMI about probiotics lately – so it makes sense that this same premise is true in our mouths.

And the raspberry slushie is still your best bet for getting blue lips. Sorry, Oragenics will probably not be helping you there.

 

 

 

 


Filed Under: Preventive Care, Products, Research Tagged With: caries vaccine, FDA, linkedin, mutant bacteria, Oragenics, research, Strep mutans

Hunka Hunka Burnin’ Handpiece

September 26, 2010 By Trish Walraven 2 Comments

 

Now this is just sad. It seems as though a perfect storm of poorly-maintained handpieces, numb lips, and inattentive dentists has come together in a flurry of reports that patients are getting burned at the dental office.

Really burned, not like they’re getting ripped off burned. First, second, and third degree burns. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is so concerned, they’ve even created a letter for you to send to your handpiece manufacturer, since they’re not naming names as to whose products are heating up the most.

Most of the manufacturers already received this letter last month in response to the FDA’s new safety alert. In the meantime, they are recommending that clinicians:

  • Are vigilant about maintaining electric dental handpieces and electric oral bone-cutting handpieces according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
  • Verify with the manufacturer the appropriate routine service interval for your dental practice, based on the actual use of your electric dental handpieces or electric intraoral bone-cutting handpieces.
  • Train personnel to properly clean and maintain the electric dental handpieces or electric intraoral bone-cutting handpieces.
  • Develop a method for tracking maintenance and routine service for each dental handpiece or electric intraoral bone-cutting handpiece.
  • Examine the electric dental handpiece attachments and electric intraoral bone-cutting handpiece attachments prior to use. Do not use worn drills or burs.
  • Do not use poorly maintained electric dental handpieces or electric intraoral bone-cutting handpieces.
  • Report overheating to the manufacturer.

Elvis would have been ashamed that his song title had been so poorly used to get your attention in this article.

So make sure that its presence is not in vain.

Filed Under: Instruments, Operative Dentistry, Products Tagged With: burns, dental handpieces, dental injuries, FDA, instruments

About

DentalBuzz explores rising trends in dentistry with its own slant. The speed at which new products and ideas enter the dental field can often outpace our ability to understand just exactly the direction in which we are heading. But somehow, by being a little less serious about dentistry and dental care, we might get closer to making sense of it all.

So yeah, a tongue-in-cheek pun would fit really nicely here, but that would be in bad taste. Never mind, it just happened anyways. Stop reading sidebars already and click on some content instead.

Recent Posts

  • Off-Label and Totally Legal: What the FDA Won’t Say About Fluoride Varnish & SDF
  • Dentists Rejoice over the Leica Camera Tariffs
  • It’s not OK for your dental practice to use free cloud-based communication
  • Patients ask, “Is it safe to go back to the dentist?”
  • Free “return to work guide” from the American Dental Association
  • Why COVID-19 increases your need for contactless payments
  • A virtual care package from worried dental hygienists
  • Lead Aprons feel so good! Here’s why.
  • What is this $&!% on my toothbrush?
  • The Prophy Jet Challenge
  • How to trick kids into brushing their teeth
  • These identical twins can both be your dentist

Article Archives

Contact Us

Guest columnists are welcome to submit edgy stories that cover new ground (no regurgitations, please!) , or if there's a topic that you'd like to see explored please punch in your best stuff here and see if it ends up sticking to the website.

Follow DentalBuzz on Social Media

  • Facebook
  • Instagram

DentalBuzz Copyright ©2008-2025 • bluenotesoftware.com • All Rights Reserved