The effectiveness and safety of treating dentine hypersensitivity with bioactive glasses

Dentine hypersensitivity (DH) is a commonly occurring dental condition where sharp pain derived from exposed dentine in response to stimuli that cannot be ascribed to any other dental diseases. It is highly prevalent affecting up to 69% of the UK population and has a significant impact on the quality of life.
Occlusion of open dentine tubules by brushing teeth with a desensitising toothpaste is a common but effective method that offers a quick alleviation of DH. Bioactive glasses that degrade in oral environment and precipitate apatite were thought to be beneficial, and have been introduced to toothpastes, e.g. Novamin (45S5 Bioglass) for Sensodyne by GSK, fluoride containing bioactive glass for BioMin F by BioMin Technologies Ltd. Apatite formation on top of open dentine tubules were evident by SEM and known to contribute towards long term pain relief.
Although considerable effort has been spent on modelling apatite formation of bioactive glasses and the chemical dissolution of mineralised dental tissues including a recent outstanding 4D synchrotron X-ray tomography (xCT) study showing the capacity of monitoring changes in dentine tubule size and demineralisation depth. However, to date we have insufficient understanding of how bioactive glass particles within dentine tubules interact with tubule walls, how the open tubule size and occlusion depth by bioactive glasses change with time and how mineral density of peritubular and intertubular dentine change, the long-term safety of bioactive glass on dental pulp. Therefore, this project aims to 1) better understand the effectiveness of treating dentine hypersensitivity with bioactive glasses using X-ray tomography 2) evaluate the safety of bioactive glasses on dental pulp 3) ultimately develop a new intervention that not safely but also effectively treat dentine hypersensitivity for better Oral Health.