A team of professors from University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora have created a dental coating that inhibits cavity-causing bacteria, the university said this week.
The coating is made from acrylated hydroxyazobenzene, also called AHA. It sheds bacterial biofilms and helps reestablish dental pulp containing connective tissue, blood vessels and cells in the center of the tooth, according to a March 6 news release from the university.
AHA is low-cost, easy to apply and has no internal staining or tooth resorption. It also prevents dental plaque and secondary cavities from forming around fillings.
The team who worked on the new treatment includes: Devatha Nair, PhD, assistant professor in the department of craniofacial biology; Mike Schurr, PhD, associate professor of immunology and microbiology; and Chaitanya Puranik, PhD, clinical assistant professor in pediatric dentistry.
"There is not a single dental material in dentistry that is this versatile; AHA, is an exception," Dr. Puranik stated in the news release. "While preventing dental caries and dispersing biofilm, it has the potential to be used as a filling material that can be placed directly in dental pulp to initiate formation of dentinal ridge. This itself is highly rare for any filling material in dentistry."