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RESEARCH REPORT |
1 Department of Oral Medicine, School of Dentistry, University of Copenhagen, Nørre Alle 20, 2200 Copenhagen N, Denmark;
2 Toms Group A/S, Ballerup, Denmark;
3 Faculty of Odontology, University of Iceland, Vatnsmyrarvegur 16, 101 Reykjavik, Iceland; and
4 Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen, Denmark
* corresponding author, tje{at}odont.ku.dk
| ABSTRACT |
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KEY WORDS: erosion soft drinks human salivary proteins hydroxyapatite crystals
| INTRODUCTION |
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Equally important in the mouth are the protective effects of the salivary proteins that also may influence the erosive potential of soft drinks (Zahradnik et al., 1976; Meurman and Frank, 1991). The aim of this study was to determine the erosive effects of soft drinks within the first minutes of exposure, and the protective effects of salivary proteins. We hypothesized that the erosive potential of acidic drinks within the first minutes of exposure is closely related to clinical findings showing that soft drink pH is the most important factor for dental erosion, that, due to their low pH, cola drinks are, initially, considerably more erosive than orange juices, and that human salivary proteins may reduce the erosive potential during the acidic challenge.
| MATERIALS & METHODS |
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10Ca2+ + 6H2PO4 + 2H2O where the released PO43 and OH ions combine with 14 hydrogen ions, thereby changing the pH in an alkaline direction. The magnitude of this pH rise depends on the amount of titratable acid in the drink. Therefore, the volume of base (µL 1 M NaOH) needed to reach each pH value obtained by HAp addition (pH1pH13) was determined from the titration curve (Fig. 1C
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Effects of Human Salivary Proteins
The combined procedure was repeated with 50 mg of HAp crystals pre-treated with 5 mg of human salivary proteins. The proteins were dialyzed and lyophilized from a pool of 1 liter unstimulated and stimulated clarified whole saliva collected from 100 healthy dental students (upon ethical approval and informed consent). SDS-PAGE revealed that all major salivary proteins were represented in the pool (Schwartz et al., 1995). HAp crystals were coated with the proteins for 24 hrs, resembling the time between daily toothbrushings, at a temperature of 5°C, to prevent denaturation and bacterial growth, in a volume of 2 mL Millipore water at pH 6.5. This pH value allowed for the normal physiological functionality of the proteins. After the crystals were coated, they and the remaining excess protein in the 2-mL solution were lyophilized and added directly to the drink in a manner similar to that for the non-coated crystals. All experiments were carried out at room temperature and were repeated at least three times.
Statistics
Statistical analyses were done with Excel and the R statistical program (R Development Core Team, 2004). Differences between juices and cola drinks were analyzed by Wilcoxons rank-sum test and correlations with Spearmans rank correlation analysis (rs). For determination of the initial erosive potential (Fig. 2
), the best linear relationships between HAp dissolution and exposure time to the drinks were obtained by linear regression analysis judged from the R-squared values obtained. In Fig. 3
, the curves were exponentially fitted. The level of significance was set at p < 0.05.
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| RESULTS |
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Effects of pH
The initial erosive potential was almost an exponential function (R-squared 0.81; p < 0.001) of the pH of the drinks, increasing nearly ten-fold for each time the pH lowered one unit (Fig. 3A
). Surprisingly, a negative relationship was obtained between the titratable acidity to pH 5.5 and initial erosive potential (not shown). When the data were reviewed, it became clear that this finding was due to all juices having higher titratable acid values than the cola drinks, and, at the same time, a lower initial erosive potential. The relation between pH and the end erosive potential after 30 min was quite different from that for the initial erosive potential (Fig. 3B
). Thus, the end erosive potential increased only around two-fold for every unit the pH was lowered. This shows that, upon prolonged exposure time to a limited volume of soft drink, other factors such as titratable acid also became important for the erosive potential.
Effects of Salivary Proteins
Prior to all experiments, the effect of adding 5 mg of proteins to 50 mL of drink was tested. For all drinks, protein addition had no, or only a negligible, effect on the pH and titratable acidity of the drink. Therefore, we were able to test the effect of adding the same amount of proteins now delivered with the HAp crystals to the drinks. The pre-treatment of HAp crystals with salivary proteins reduced the initial erosive potential by 50% at pH values near 2.5 (Fig. 3A
). However, at pH values above 3.5, no protective effect was obtained from the proteins. Thus, the protective effect of the proteins on HAp crystals (i.e., the relative reduction in initial erosive potential with salivary proteins) was significantly negatively correlated with pH (rs = 0.47; p < 0.05) and significantly positively correlated with the initial erosive potential (rs = 0.65; p < 0.01). As a consequence of this relationship, the protective effect was higher in cola drinks than in juices on a group basis (p < 0.05). Interestingly, only a very limited effect of the proteins was obtained on the end erosive potential after 30 min, and this effect was not dependent on pH (Fig. 3B
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| DISCUSSION |
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Cola drinks had more than ten-fold higher erosive potential than orange juices within the first minutes after exposure. This high erosive potential corresponded well to the pH of the cola drinks, which was around one unit lower than that of the juices. Thus, within the first minutes, the erosive potential was nearly an exponential function of pH in both cola drinks and orange juice, as would be expected due to the logarithmic nature of the pH scale. These findings are in agreement with those of Larsen and Nyvad (1999), who found a similar exponential relation between soft drink pH and erosive potential on teeth. However, in their study, the titratable acidity was also found to have an effect on the erosive potential, a finding that has been supported by several other studies (Lussi et al., 1995; Edwards et al., 1999; Jensdottir et al., 2005a). Nevertheless, according to our in vitro findings, we speculate that the titratable acidity is not related to the erosive potential from the time the drink meets the tooth surfaces until the first swallow occurs. The titratable acidity may, however, become important later on, when some of the drink is kept in contact with teeth. Such a situation could occur in dry-mouth patients with low salivary flow rates (Fox et al., 1987) and, consequently, slow oral clearance (Dawes, 1983), with drinks that, due to their physical characteristics, tend to attach to the teeth for a long period of time (Ireland et al., 1995), and in patients with special drinking habits (Ireland et al., 1995; Johansson et al., 2004).
In the mouth, tooth surfaces are covered with the acquired pellicle, comprising many of the proteins present in saliva (Lendenmann et al., 2000), and this pellicle has been shown to protect tooth surfaces against erosion (Meurman and Frank, 1991; Amaechi et al., 1999; Nekrashevych and Stosser, 2003). In this study, we showed that the protective effects of salivary proteins increased with increasing erosive potential within the first minutes of exposure to the drinks. Within this time, the proteins halved the erosive potential of cola drinks with a low pH, while only limited effect was found with the orange juices that had higher pH values and thus lower erosive potential. We speculate that these findings are due to the relationship between the speed of desorption of proteins from the crystals and the speed of the erosive challenge. Thus, if the erosive speed (initial erosive potential) exceeded the speed of desorption of proteins from the crystals, a protective effect was obtained, and vice versa. We assume that when the proteins were washed of the crystals, their protective effect ceased, which explains the very limited effects of the proteins on the erosive potential after 30 min (end erosive potential). Thus, in the mouth, after exhibiting its protective effects, the protein coating must be renewed to withstand a new acidic challenge. However, renewal of the protein coating may take considerable time (Zahradnik et al., 1976; Nieuw Amerongen, 1987), and this time may be a critical factor in individuals who tend to sip soft drinks throughout the day, which partly explains their high incidence of erosion (Johansson et al., 2004). Another likely explanation for the relationship between the protective effects of the proteins and the erosive potential of the drinks may be protein denaturation, which could have occurred in drinks with low pH values, thereby increasing the viscosity of the protein coating on the crystals (Holma and Hegg, 1989) and adding to the protective effects.
In conclusion, this study shows that the erosive potential of soft drinks within the first minutes of exposure is solely dependent on the pH of the drinks. Furthermore, it is ten-fold higher in cola drinks when compared with orange juices. However, in cola drinks, human salivary proteins may reduce the erosive potential up to 50%.
| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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Received April 29, 2005; Last revision October 26, 2005; Accepted November 1, 2005
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