Chinese Scientists Are Developing A Vaccine Against Cavities (nature.com) 120
A vaccine against tooth decay "is urgently needed" writes Nature -- and a team of Chinese scientists is getting close. hackingbear writes:
Scientists at Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences developed low side effects and high protective efficiency using flagellin-rPAc fusion protein KFD2-rPAc, a promising vaccine candidate. In rat challenge models, KFD2-rPAc induces a robust rPAc-specific IgA response, and confers efficient prophylactic and therapeutic efficiency as does KF-rPAc, while the flagellin-specific inflammatory antibody responses are highly reduced.
Did they rescue the princess of Canada too? (Score:4, Funny)
I've seen this one.
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The study said they couldn't find studies that looked into flossing in a way one could conclude that flossing reduced cavities or didn't reduce cavities.
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NB4 Mutation! (Score:3)
fuck, too late. -_-
Not just cavities (Score:5, Interesting)
If this actually kills off the bacteria causing cavities, it may also get rid of the plaque biofilms that they produce. This could be a very big deal - those biofilm plaques are also a reason for arterial plaques that cause heart disease.
Re:Not just cavities (Score:5, Insightful)
The heart disease link is certainly interesting and that's something I've never heard of before. Might you have some literature regarding that?
I think the idea is to use this (Score:2)
Re:Not just cavities (Score:5, Interesting)
Dentists are quick to assume that the mouth bacteria causes heart disease, but I've never seen that hypothesis tested anywhere. It seems more reasonable to me that when a person has heart disease, their body is weakened in general, and the body's resistance to gum disease is weakened as well.
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BBCs science programme 'Tomorrow's World' showed something like this vaccine three decades ago, but nothing became of it, everybody forgot about it and Tomorrows World stuff is pre-internet and I can find no info' about it. The conspiracy theorist in me thinks that this got squished by affected parties.
Worst summary ever (Score:4, Insightful)
It might as well be Egyptian hieroglyphics.
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It might as well be Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Try reading TFA.
Re: Worst summary ever (Score:1)
No.
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I think it is Egyptian hieroglyphics, it's just that Slashdot's Unicode support is broken...
Solved 80 years ago (Score:4, Informative)
Dr Weston A. Price, a dentist practicing in the USA, travelled widely and examined people of nearly a dozen "native" cultures ranging from the Inuit and Native Americans to the Masai and other East African tribes, inhabitants of New Guinea and Peru, and people living in isolated parts of Switzerland and Scotland. Those peoples all ate traditional diets, of varying composition - some including grain and others not.
Very few of them had any tooth decay or gum disease, and the less grain and sweet foods they ate, the less dental harm they suffered. None of them had ever brushed their teeth, and they didn't need to - except to make their breath sweeter for the sake of others.
Immediately those same people began eating "civilized" foods - mainly white flour products and sugar - their dental health became dreadful within a few years.
https://www.westonaprice.org/h... [westonaprice.org]
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The skulls and teeth of long-dead hunter-gatherers reveal the same pattern. Very few cavities or lost teeth, excellent jaw bone formations. As soon as farming began, dental health went straight downhill along with general health.
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As soon as farming began, dental health went straight downhill along with general health.
Damn! Is that why we're living longer?! Because we're so unhealthy? Has this thesis been peer reviewed?
Re: Solved 80 years ago (Score:1)
It's because teeth are becoming vestigial, but nobody wants to accept that.
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Because those that had bad dental health or cavities, died early.
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Perhaps they, died of comma overdose syndrome.
Re:Solved 80 years ago (Score:5, Informative)
I am an actual archaeologist and you wouldn't believe the state some of the prehistoric skulls we find are in. With some of the things I've seen I can only surmise that apparently they didn't know to pull teeth when the situation got out of hand. I'm talking teeth rotten completely away taking big parts of the jaw with them, showing signs of partial healing so the individual must have suffered from it for quite a long time. Usually we keep skulls like that in depot because visitors don't like them, but sometimes there's hardly a complete skull available from a site.
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No comment on the teeth, but even many hundreds of thousands of years ago, if you made it to about 20, you had a pretty good chance of making it to 50 or more.
However, your chances of making it to 5 years old was grim. The classic "30 year life expectancy" is usually misunderstood.
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As an alternate data point, my dentist has traveled throughout the world doing charity work (and still does every year or so), and he says that for people on traditional diets, he sees a drop in cavities, but not in gum disease. YMMV.
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I met an Aboriginal girl with exactly that story. She told me she'd never even seen a toothbrush until she was 17. When I expressed surprise, she then told me she grew up on an Aboriginal mission and had never seen lollies/sweets either. Then she moved to the city and it was all downhill from there.
Not everyone agrees (Score:2)
From one of Price's more critical reviews [quackwatch.org]:
"Price made a whirlwind tour of primitive areas, examined the natives superficially, and jumped to simplistic conclusions. While extolling their health, he ignored their short life expectancy and high rates of infant mortality, endemic diseases, and malnutrition. While praising their diets for not producing cavities, he ignored the fact that malnourished people don't usually get many cavities."
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Against cavities: Cut the sweet stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
A personal anecdote - but one approved and confirmed as general dentist wisdom by a friend of mine who is a dentist.
I always had problems with cavities, since my youth there never was a dentist visit where they didn't drill. About 7 years ago I drastically cut back on sugar, not because of teeth but because of other issues (now resolved).
I used to be a typical German: I could not live without a bakery. I ate loads of bread, pasta, pizza (but actually good one) - and between meals not infrequently cookies or a piece of cake. I also ate quite a lot of chocolate and other sweets, always desert. LOTS and lots of fruit (self-made fruit salad!)
Before I give you the wrong idea that I may have to mention I never had a weight issue, I was very active too..Not that you think what I'm saying only applies to obese people and so what I'm writing does not apply to others. I could easily - and I mean easily - run a half marathon (never tried more than that), just for fun.
Anyway, my health issues forced me to experiment. To cut the story short and leave out all the experiments and everything in between, without consulting any book or "nutritionist", only learning to read and listen to what my own body was telling me, I ended up eating very few "carbs" (not the chemical meaning of the word but the kinds of foods). I almost never buy anything from the bakery, except for (very good!) white bread, which lasts two weeks or so (or even more). NO chocolate, no cake, no cookies. Very few fruits, and even less of the sweet kinds of fruits. Almost never bread, almost never pasta, almost never potatoes. NO SUGAR. Again, no extremes: I'm sure one or the other salad dressing I got when I didn't eat at home had sugar. I would not even mind eating a piece of cake now and then - if only I had any appetite for that stuff. I never do, not any more.
I don't have to force myself to any of it, it comes naturally now!
On the other hand, I eat a lot less meat than in the past too. Again not because of some "nutrition advice" that I follow, I really can't!
But I could never eat something as extreme as an Atkins diet. I _do_ need carbs (that's why the white bread), just very little. I could also never go without meat, go full vegetarian. No extremes (unless "No sweets" is something you consider extreme).
What I eat a lot more of: Fat and vegetables. Fat in the form of olive oil, nuts (lots! - what is the English word for "Nussmus"??? Darn!), cream. Quite abit of dairy, but zero milk, all in the form of cheese and other kinds of milk that went through bacterial processing.
MY TEETH:
I have suddenly had ZERO problems with my teeth for years! A complete change! And I don't even need to brush my teeth. Okay, for breath :-) Not a single cavity anywhere. My dentist friend just said "Of course, if you leave out the sugar that's to be expected."
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Of course we knew that (Score:3)
That eating sweets was bad for the teeth is common enough knowledge pretty much everywhere. but as you can easily see, it has little to no effect on the population.
What surprised me was the HUGE effect - that the problems went down to zero, and I'm not even doing anything extreme. I mean, I don't even try to avoid every last grain of sugar.
Before that I would have expected for the problems to become less, maybe even much less. But down to zero??? And I can now do pretty much whatever I want, without any pun
"shear" = "sheer" (Score:2)
Why can't they let us edit comments for 5 minutes after posting...the preview does not help, I always discover the typos only after I submit the comment. Sigh.
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Already answered (Score:2)
Why do you write something that somebody else already said and that I had already responded to? See by phantomfive's comment and my reply to it.
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I've once read somewhere that the problem with sugar is not so much that it feeds bacteria that cause cavities, but that it leaches minerals from bones (including teeth). So even if a sugar-lover brushes religiously, he may still experience caries. Not sure how scientifically tested that is...
Nussmus = perhaps nut butter (similar to peanut butter) or nut paste?
Did you not read what I wrote? (Score:2)
> But I think you went overboard with the bread and pasta and stuff.
Please reread :-)
try xylitol instead (Score:4, Interesting)
Xylitol sweetener kills h pylori, a bacteria that causes tooth decay and gastric ulcers. This has been known for a long time. Ask your toothpaste maker why they don't sweeten the product with xylitol. Note also that xylitol does not cause a big jump in blood glucose & insulin like many sweeteners. Taste is OK, better than stevia. And to top it off, you don't have to pay the premium price for a patented product.
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There are a few gums that are sweetened with Xylitol as well. Great for the teeth!
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Also, deadly to dogs.
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+1
Xylitol works. So simple. So inexpensive. So gentile. So effective. Here is a great product called "Squiggle" that I highly recommend:
https://www.amazon.com/Squigle... [amazon.com]
https://www.amazon.com/Squigle... [amazon.com]
Brush with it (at least twice a day) and when done spit it all out but DO NOT RINSE. There is nothing harmful or toxic in it to humans. The harmful bacteria will eat the Xylitol and simply die because they can't process/digest it.
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Hm, now I'm trying to think why it wouldn't be kosher...
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> Hm, now I'm trying to think why it wouldn't be kosher...
LOL! Typos can be so wonderful sometimes
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It kills my bunghole too. It has a side effect as a laxative.
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I think you may have just sabotaged one of the most epic trolls in Slashdot history.
If we weren't afraid of GMOs... (Score:3)
I once read a story about a guy who developed bacteria that convert food into (tiny amounts of) alcohol instead of acid. He also bred them to out-compete the normal tooth bacteria. But because they're genetically engineered, they couldn't be developed for human use.
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Fluoride rinse (Score:2)
Fluoride rinse induces "remineralization" [colgate.com] I've personally seen it. If you have a soft spot in a tooth, using fluoride rinse twice a day will help harden it back up (remineralize it) with a few days.
It's a very powerful product.
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Grain alcohol and rainwater. Right, Jack?
This is ... (Score:2)
Research has been happening for some time (Score:4, Interesting)
I talked to a group working on a vaccine for dental caries about 15 years ago. When I asked who they were targeting, the reply was head and neck cancer patients. When you get cancer in this area and go in for radiotherapy, the salivary glands are often unintended targets of the radiation and die. This, in turn, leads to massive dental caries problems in the patients, so much so that they are sometimes advised to have their teeth pulled before therapy begins.
With the rise of highly targeted multi-beam radiotherapy, I'm not sure if the problem is still as bad as it was though. Don't smoke.
Remineralisation (Score:3)
The following tooth treatments discourage cavity-causing bacteria and encourage remineralisation of teeth:
* Arginine-containing toothpaste -- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
* CPP-ACP-containing treatment -- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
As far as I know, the number of current manufacturers of these treatments are limited, with Colgate Pro-Argin for arginine-containing toothpaste, and GC Tooth Mousse for CPP-ACP.
This might not be a good thing. (Score:2)
The protein looks like this one (Score:1)
BMA-RPAC-19, partial [Brugia malayi]
1 mtslldserk veildvdsfr sdpsnltvil yeedhtigns lkhvlckmrd vefcgynvph
61 pledkilirl qtkrgvsaas mlmkgfeele cifasirqkf dssyalyttn ted
Basepair 37 as driven by Basepair 39
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I wonder what causes some people to be prone and others not? I've never had a cavity at 37, nor has my father at 67. My mother, however, has had many. Same with my sister. Everyone has great dental hygiene.
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Or, possibly, it's caused by hundreds of low-level but repeated exposures like kisses and sharing food. Many mothers (and fathers) pre-chew little pieces of tough food for their babies as they first start to wean, or play the "look, mummy's loves this food" game where mum takes a bite first to prove to the skeptical kid that puréed broccoli is "delicious".
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...which is why it's recommended for parents to NOT put their baby's pacifier in their own mouth.
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More so than that...an individual develops bacteria in their mouth at a very young age and it's virtually impossible to wipe it out and replace it.
Now, when you're an infant you haven't done that yet and it's another story. Maybe we should stop tongue kissing infants...unless you don't have cavities? lol
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Meth Mouth FTW
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My understanding from a fair bit of previous reading (and research into preventing cavities):
Your mouth is a sea of bacteria and, like your body as a whole, the exact makeup of that bacteria varies from person to person but develops when you're an infant and is generally consistent to the individual over their lifetime (excluding infections which are a separate case). These cultures Some of that bacteria break down food and create chemicals that attack your enamel more than others. Sometimes greatly more.
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"I wonder what causes some people to be prone and others not?"
Combination of dental hygiene, genetics, and environmental factors such as untreated water.
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Over 50 and no cavities and usually brush once a day with a Sonicare. Other family members have similar history. I suspect it is related to genetics and saliva production and ph. Dry mouth can lead to an increase in cavities.
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I wonder what causes some people to be prone and others not? I've never had a cavity at 37, nor has my father at 67. My mother, however, has had many. Same with my sister. Everyone has great dental hygiene.
You may have grown up and drank fluoridated water. Naturally fluoridated or low floride levels added to city water are not dangerous or toxic, even if boiled to reduce the water in food by 10000 times. Fluoride is said, prevents tooth decay.
Bacteria vs Virus vs whatever. (Score:3)
isn't caused by a virus.
So, what ? You can produce anti-bodies against (and thus basically vaccinate against) nearly anything that has big enough molecules to be recognized by an antibody pouch....
It is caused by metabolic by-products of bacteria
You could in theory try to vaccinate against the bacteria producing them.
bacteria practically living outside the body.
so are antibodies : they can be secreted and thus they too can be found outside of the body.
the current MAIN problem might end up that these bacteria, however problematic at causing cavities, still have an important role to play at training the immune system.
you mig
vaccinations work fine against bacteria. (Score:5, Informative)
Vaccination (challenging the immune system with a substance related to the pathogen, to promote directed response, such as antibody generation) is a class of immunizations that works fine against both viruses and bacteria, and to varying degrees to other components of disease processes. Diptheriia, tetanus, and whooping cough, for example, are all bacterial diseases.
Vaccination originally meant the specific challenge of a deliberate infection with cowpox virus (ariolae vaccinae) to promote immunity to the related smallpox virus. It has since been applied to other immunizations that involve a challenge with a related substance or a component of a killed pathogen (but not the live pathogen itself - which is "innoculation"). This usage was promoted by Pasteur, in order to honor Jenner, who developed the smallpox vaccination.
Antibodies from the blood pass freely into saliva and remain active there, so an immunization against dental caries bacteria has been known to be possible for decades. But tooth decay bacteria are a problem for vaccine development.
They avoid the immune system by displaying surface proteins that are similar to those on the heart. This both reduces the immune systems willingness to attack them and leads to autoimmune attacks on the heart and circulatory system if the immune system DOES go after them. (This is why dentists may prescribe prophylactic antibiotic doses before certain procedures that are likely to result in decay bacteria being transferred to the bloodstream.)
Before molecular biology, vaccines were typically made by growing the pathogen, killing it, and producing a sterile, injectable, mixture containing its components (along with an irritant to convince the immune system there's something that needs its attention). Doing this with dental caries would lead to heart problems, so tooth decay vaccines have not been pursued until recently.
By selecting a conserved (doesn't change much because it has to be this way to work) surface component (so the bug will have trouble evolving away from susceptibility to the immunization) that does NOT look to the immune system like some part of the body, and using that as the challenge agent, it should be possible to come up with an immunization to the common tooth decay bacteria.
Which seems to be what is being done here.
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