I feel like I've been reading this exact same article for the last 15 years.. I find it very difficulty to parse what is real and what is vaporware in the medical breakthroughs community.
A better approach is to monitor FDA updates. When an FDA trial shows positive results for a new treatment and approval for public use appears imminent, that would qualify as news in that regard.
If anyone's a dentist or is close to one, I'd love to know something I haven't found a satisfactory answer for online: if the vast majority of cavities were "magically" cured over the next few years, what impact would that have on the finances of your practice?
I'm not suggesting there's a conscious conspiracy or anything malicious. But I observe that incentives are weirdly aligned. I wonder what this kind of thing would do to a very large industry if all of a sudden some percentage of business disappeared. Is it a large percentage? Would they pivot to more preventative medicine? Would patients adopt a longer duration between checkups?
Not a dentist, but my read of the situation is that dentists generally are not very excited about doing fillings and there's a push towards getting into more complex procedures like root canals, invisalign and implants. It's probably partly due to wanting to upskill and increase your repertoire and partly due to the margins. The margins with these procedures can be an order of magnitude more than that of fillings, especially anything that is supplied by a big brand.
I like how you ask explicitly for replies from dentists and then most of the answers you get are people saying they aren't dentists but still want to give their two cents anyway.
Teeth are still susceptible to mechanical wear, and as life expectancy is inching towards 90 (at least among wealthier people in wealthier countries), dentists will have a lot of work to do anyway.
The societal standard matters more than raw incidence of cavities etc. Three generations ago, it was considered absolutely normal to have dentures in your fifties. Nowadays, middle class people tend to die with (heavily fixed, but still their) teeth and some implants in their mouths.
Poorly designed studies, materials proposed without insight into ramifications and manufacturing, and P-Hacking has ruined the publics trust in science. I blatantly just ignore any headline like this now. Can't trust science anymore.... sad. How many new "cancer cures" have been posted to Reddit and HN over the last decade that never came to fruition.
Not to say doing the science and studying to find new approaches is not beneficial. I just think we need to reconsider how we communicate new research. Its like how CEOs hype up AI products at this point. "This will change everything ..... potentially maybe in twenty years (omitted)"
TL;DR: EDTA is the magic ingredient that will annihilate the disease-causing biofilm on your teeth & gums, especially when you fund your own studies and spend the rest of your money made from your overpriced toothpaste gel on marketing.
Just brush and floss 2x a day, and chew gum if you like to.
As someone with low maintenance teeth how far has dental tech procedures improved in last 30 years? Feels dental hygienist are all using tools that haven't changed in decades.
Hey @dang (I know it doesn't work, but isn't it fun to use your imagination?), can we get this press release replaced by a link to the actual paper [0]? This one is even open-access!
Why? The press release is much more useful for the vast majority of HN readers in my opinion. The paper is something you read if you want to know more so the right place for it is the comments.
In general, not referring to this specific case, scientific papers are often written for people with specialized background and are hard to understand for people without that background, even if they're otherwise smart and educated.
Just to say, I actually disagree entirely. I do not believe press releases are, almost ever, valuable. Papers are just a format (with some writing style conventions that tend to follow the given field-of-study); they may be intimidating for many, but the hacker spirit and ethos is to dive in and tackle it, and that will pay far more dividends for everyone reading it than to consume more advertising. :)
> When applied, the gel creates a thin and robust layer that impregnates teeth, filling holes and cracks in them.
Having an option other than crowning to treat cracks would be a game-changer, especially since the AAE not long ago put out a policy paper recommending that all teeth with cracks (even asymptomatic) receive crown coverage, which is both costly and presents a risk of inducing irreversible pulpitis and subsequent necrosis in the tooth (due to the heat and mechanical trauma of the crown prep.).
Coincidentally, there recently was a very similar story from another UK university, where they used a substance found in hair to make a new "tooth repair" toothpaste:
one of my front tooth was chipped years ago while playing around and some days ago i was feeling sensitive in that tooth i take very good care of my teeth, when i visited dentist he said this tooth will die sooner or later because of trauma it endured the nerves will slowly die and we eventually have to do root canal. i was very disappointed to know that there is nothing i can do to keep that tooth alive
I've used `BioMin F` with fluorapatite which is apparently more effective than hydroxyapatite - it's not a miracle regrowth protein like this article seems to claim, but its definitely a noticeable difference compared to regular toothpastes.
Don't see any difference. I'm on a low carb diet and never eat things with added sugar anyways, so I assume that I could even drop toothpaste alltogether.
Also, my teeth have been yellow since as long as I can remember (and long before I got into coffee and tea) and the same is true for everyone in my family - and Boka didn't change that at all.
So... it is not doing me any harm, so far, but it is also not performing any miracles.
Not saying Boka is good, but to clarify, non-additive sugars from fruits and teas can significantly affect tooth enamel in addition to citric acids. Coffee is also a big culprit as well. You definitely should not drop toothpaste altogether.
For the uninitiated, Theodent is a $100/tube toothpaste made with the chocolate extract theobromine, instead of fluoride, based on a similar paper quite a while back.
44 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 65.0 ms ] threadYou must be new
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44922571
Is this a press release from a university research group, as it appears to be (the site is down)? Then it's nearly meaningless.
I'm not suggesting there's a conscious conspiracy or anything malicious. But I observe that incentives are weirdly aligned. I wonder what this kind of thing would do to a very large industry if all of a sudden some percentage of business disappeared. Is it a large percentage? Would they pivot to more preventative medicine? Would patients adopt a longer duration between checkups?
The societal standard matters more than raw incidence of cavities etc. Three generations ago, it was considered absolutely normal to have dentures in your fifties. Nowadays, middle class people tend to die with (heavily fixed, but still their) teeth and some implants in their mouths.
Not to say doing the science and studying to find new approaches is not beneficial. I just think we need to reconsider how we communicate new research. Its like how CEOs hype up AI products at this point. "This will change everything ..... potentially maybe in twenty years (omitted)"
If you ever get into any serious money, forget cars or houses: have your teeth ripped out and replaced with artificial ones.
Usually the safety profiles of those companies are very very very bad, but probably reference very good research.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a66012157/hu... regrowth-trials-japan/
This would highly disrupt the dental-industrial-complex
Site is down, not in archive.org or archive.today. This Yandex Cache link worked for me: https://yandexwebcache.net/yandbtm?fmode=inject&tm=176237557...
TL;DR: EDTA is the magic ingredient that will annihilate the disease-causing biofilm on your teeth & gums, especially when you fund your own studies and spend the rest of your money made from your overpriced toothpaste gel on marketing.
Just brush and floss 2x a day, and chew gum if you like to.
A paper from 2011 on the topic:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9374843/
All the best,
-HG
[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-64982-y
In general, not referring to this specific case, scientific papers are often written for people with specialized background and are hard to understand for people without that background, even if they're otherwise smart and educated.
All the best,
-HG
Having an option other than crowning to treat cracks would be a game-changer, especially since the AAE not long ago put out a policy paper recommending that all teeth with cracks (even asymptomatic) receive crown coverage, which is both costly and presents a risk of inducing irreversible pulpitis and subsequent necrosis in the tooth (due to the heat and mechanical trauma of the crown prep.).
Hmm.
He’s a pretty modern dentist I think. He has no idea about it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44922571
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroxyapatite
Anyone on this stuff? I want to take a break from fluoride paste.
In fact, a year ago, they wanted to put in a filling for a minor cavity, but I wanted to put it off and by the time I went back they said it was gone.
edit: I also like the tabs because they're easy to travel with.
Don't see any difference. I'm on a low carb diet and never eat things with added sugar anyways, so I assume that I could even drop toothpaste alltogether.
Also, my teeth have been yellow since as long as I can remember (and long before I got into coffee and tea) and the same is true for everyone in my family - and Boka didn't change that at all.
So... it is not doing me any harm, so far, but it is also not performing any miracles.
For the uninitiated, Theodent is a $100/tube toothpaste made with the chocolate extract theobromine, instead of fluoride, based on a similar paper quite a while back.