I noticed something about a S. mutans vaccine on here and I'm not sure if this is what the person was talking about, but what do dentists think of this? Isn't roughly 90% of what a dentist generally does related to cavities in some way, either prevention or treatment? <a href="http://www.napa.ufl.edu/2000news/teethspr.htm" target="_blank">http://www.napa.ufl.edu/2000news/teethspr.htm</a>
The article you mentioned is from 2000 - I wonder how the trials went? At any rate, a friend of mine (marketing consultant) suggests an alternative outcome. When caries are eliminated, dentist is no longer bearer of bad news. All the money and stress spent on restorations is now available to fund cosmetic work. If the hours you currently spend in the dental chair are used on restorations, are you going to spend additional time to correct minor flaws? Of course not...until caries are elminated. This new market has the potential to become even larger when you consider the people who completely avoid dentists. After all - look what happened after flouride in water. Decay decreased. but number of dentists and income did too. Who would have expected that to happen?
well the article did say DELAY and not ELIMINATE S. mutans from accmulating so the vaccine's therapeutic fxn. is limited to a certain extent, plus we have to take into account tolerance or resistance to the vaccine that may develop later on... i don't think this new development will hurt the practice at all... and it should only be an adjunct to a proper oral hygiene regimen... it would defeat the purpose if people would just rely on a vaccine and relax and eventually think this can replace meticulous care of their teeth...
But...it's not really a vaccine. It doesn't involve the human immune system whatsoever. It's a GM strain of the bacteria that doesn't produce lactic acid and easily overtakes the naturally occuring form. I don't see anything in the article about it simply delaying the overtake of the mouth by natural S. mutans. Could you point that out? As for something more recent, a patent was issued in 2001 for it, but I wouldn't expect anything all that quickly. I'm thinking more about the long term. I suppose resistence could develop, but that would be a relatively rare occurence and likely multiple strains could be made. And as for fluoride...yes, dental income did increase after that, but so did median incomes overall and general interest in dental health (as a result of education), I'm not so sure you'd see such a jump in the future. The cosmetic issues certainly have merit, but you must get a cavity filled or pulled, you don't absolutely have to get braces or implants or whitenings. You could go buy a new car instead, or even other sorts of non-dental plastic surgery. It's not like people put a certain amount away for dental services and just have absolutely decided to spend the money on that.
Only time will tell, no use debating! Thanks for the article though, I've always enjoyed scientific research discoveries!
Did you guys notice this story was just posted on the Drudge Report? Check out the latest at <a href="http://www.drudgereport.com" target="_blank">www.drudgereport.com</a> Story filed: 17:57 Sunday 17th February 2002 Drudge is the guy who broke the Lewinsky scandal. Must be onto something here.
