
Dentists everywhere utterly inconsolable
Ah well!
Japanese researchers plan to begin human trials of a tooth regrowth drug this fall at Kyoto University Hospital following successful animal trials. The first stage of tests will begin in September and run through 2025 involving 30 adult males. A following round will test the drug on children between the ages of two and seven …
I read recently a study found that things like the need for fillings are greatly over-diagnosed anyway, so this is just one more thing for them to do. But a single tooth can need multiple fillings that each cost 50-100% as much as an extraction, so pulling and re-growing might be less profitable. I had close to 100 in my adult life before my last dentist finally told me to stop trying because it was a waste of money due to there not being enough of anything left to hold them together for long periods, and I just had the remainder (only half left) pulled. Unless you can only get the drug directly from your dentist (or most likely they'll get kickbacks for prescribing a particular brand), and it requires them to monitor you with weekly visits for months, and then they can tell you that you need braces to straighten the new tooth and line it up with the others. Oh, and it's not the same color, so you need to have whitening treatments.
Highly doubtful pulling the teeth would help there. It isn't like the tooth goes bad and starts affecting the rest of the body. It is the plaque you aren't cleaning from the gumline, between the teeth and so on that causes problems. There seems to be a pretty clear genetic factor, too. Some people don't brush well and never floss but never had a filling, others try to do all the right things and fight gum disease and cavities.
It would be a boon to people who have lost teeth in accidents and have no choice today but to get implants which have their own issues. When I had braces as a kid I used to have dreams about stuff like having an accident riding my bike and knocking my front teeth out the day after I got the braces off lol
My father's side of the family is one of those with hereditary bad teeth. We all end up with all of them pulled by the time we're in our 40s, after decades of fillings, root canals, etc. I had 8 or 9 abscesses over the years (my body seems prone to that as they happen in other parts as well), plus deep cavities that occurred just within the 4 months between cleanings and exams, requiring a total of 9 root canals, 9 crowns (not all on the root canals), 70 to 100 fillings, and 14 extractions (not counting wisdom teeth) before finally having to give up and get the remainder removed and get dentures when I was 44. I didn't practice the best oral hygiene but part of that was because when I did make an effort, it didn't seem to make a difference.
Considering it cost $24,000 for the final extractions, implants and dentures, it seems like a round of this drug and the monitoring or whatever goes with it could have been less expensive and given me a better set of teeth than dentures do.
Forgot to mention, that wasn't even for permanent dentures. It was just two implants on top and two on the bottom, so the dentures are removable. (Which turns out to be preferable to me because of the amount of food that gets stuck under them which would be harder to clean if they couldn't come out.) A non-removable set, only able to be taken out by the doctor for maintenance, with 6 on top and 6 on the bottom, would have totaled $75,000. That is on the high end, due to the area I'm in, but still.
If this works, I'd guess that it will work like regrowth in children. First, the roots of the current teeth will resorb. Then the teeth will fall out. Then new teeth will grow in. But one does wonder how long the new teeth will last if medication is still being applied to the most stubborn of the old set. It'll be annoying if one's shiny new front teeth fall out while some molars from the old set are still loosening up and haven't even started to bud a replacement.
I'd also worry about side affects. A lot of otherwise worthy medications have serious or even devastating side affects. One hopes this treatment doesn't cause depression. Or massive weight gain. Or the growth of a long hairy tail.
Time will tell.
《One hopes this treatment doesn't cause depression. Or massive weight gain. Or the growth of a long hairy tail.》
Turn on the TV: --> depression
Proper teeth: --> weight gain
A long hairy tail perhaps I could handle if I moved to Scandanavia where I might attract a Huldra. :)
I quite fancy a long, hairy, prehensile tail. Could be quite useful. I could also use it as an excuse to start wearing an opera cloak - something I've always secretly wanted to do anyway. I like the idea of walking into a room impressively with the swish of my cloak - even better if I could surreptitiously steal things with my tail while doing it.
Could have all sorts of fun with it. Plus it would also be very practical. Repairing your glasses is really a three handed job. One to hold the screwdriver, one the tweezers and now you can hold the glasses with your tail. Also useful when cooking.
I think just brushing and flossing properly would be a far cheaper and convenient option than extracting a tooth and re-growing it every time it gets a cavity, even more so than getting a filling for each cavity. This shouldn't be considered just a casual option to oral hygiene.
As one of the other posters point out, there's a strong genetic component. Some folks brush and floss exactly per the recommendations, yet get cavities and other problems. Some don't follow the recommendations and are fine. I'm greatly blessed to be in the latter camp - once went 10 years between dentist appointments, the only flossings are when the dentist does it - and haven't had any cavities. Go figure. (Though I do brush twice a day.)
I will be very impressed if this is capable of giving us teeth that align well without having to get braces as soon as they come in. When they're developing as a child, it's alongside the rest of the face and jaw, so everything is guided and fit together. Having them come in separately might not work the same, whether they're able to regrow a single tooth or a full set. I would expect it to also cause wisdom teeth to regrow, which would be a problem. This doesn't seem to be a targeted growth. They just inject it into the body and wait to see if any teeth grow, so I don't understand how they can give it to humans who have any existing teeth without a whole new set growing and pushing those out, or coming out sideways underneath them. Perhaps having an existing tooth somehow inhibits the regrowth, but I wonder how something like having had a root canal would affect it.
The animals like alligators and sharks that completely regrow teeth have an entirely different arrangement of teeth, with a completely different shape and function from human, which is far more forgiving of misalignments. When you're just stabbing the food and tearing it apart, a jagged bite isn't a big deal and even helps. When you're grinding vegetable matter and need things to squeeze relatively flat, those teeth need to grow in a pretty specific way. I suspect this may be WHY some species lost the ability to grow new teeth after birth. (There are species that have teeth that continuously grow, like rabbits, but those are not NEW teeth, and they have to constantly wear them down or it will kill them.)
They show a ferret that grew an extra front tooth, like that's a good thing. We don't want humans just randomly growing extra teeth. And ferrets and other animals aren't concerned with the appearance of their teeth so if they aren't straight, it doesn't matter, as long as it doesn't negatively affect their ability to eat.
What coins should I stock up on? It used to be sixpence under the pillow for a tooth that came out. What's the going rate today?
When my kids were small the rate was actually 50p, . The money would be left by Fat Mick and Bert, our family tooth fairies.
Fat Mick and Bert were inspired by Sir Pterrys own tooth fairy character in Hogfather. The beer is raised to SirPt. Thus far his tooth fairy inspiration has bought great amusement to three generations of my family and looks likely to continue.
I remember that too.
Is it just me, or are “miracle” tooth regrow/repair treatments a bit like nuclear fusion power - always 50 10 years away?
Or perhaps, with my tinfoil hat on and my tongue firmly in cheek, it’s like the carburetor that let cars run on water, or the everlasting filament light bulb… world-changing inventions suppressed by an evil industry cabal. In this case, dentists. Does anyone here trust the B.D.A.?