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On December 14-15, 2010, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) convened an Advisory Panel to discuss several scientific issues that may affect the regulation of dental amalgam.

Children and adolescents with asthma have somewhat more caries and suffer more often from gingivitis (gingival inflammation) than people of similar age without asthma.

Your purse is your trusty standby, but it may also be acting as a "subway for germs," picking up bacteria wherever you leave it, then transporting them directly into your home.

According to Millennium Research Group (MRG), the global authority on medical technology market intelligence, standouts in surgical procedures in terms of growth over the next five years are going to be dental implant, facial injectable, optical coherence tomography (OCT) catheter, spinal nonfusion implant, and percutaneous heart valve procedures in North America.

An adult has 32 teeth. In front of the mouth there are incisive teeth and canines.

The main treatment for cavities - drill and fill - has given the dental profession a bad rep. Ask people what they hate to do most, and I bet half of them will say "Going to the dentist."

In the halls of Capitol Hill, a rancorous battle rages over how to deliver better healthcare to the public. But in the nation's biotechnology labs—and in a few overseas—scientists and engineers are staging a quieter revolution in basic patient care.

Gene for tooth enamel could prevent decay.  

The tooth fairy could soon have less work on her hands now that a gene needed to make tooth enamel has been identified.

Humans cannot restore tooth enamel when it is damaged because the cells that produce it, called ameloblasts, retire once enamel fully covers mature teeth. Consequently, if the surface of our pearly whites becomes compromised through poor diet or inadequate tooth-brushing, cavities form as bacteria attack layers deeper down.

James O'Sullivanat the University of Manchester, UK, and colleagues, scanned the genomes of four people from the same family who shared a genetic disorder called amelogenesis imperfecta (AI) that leads to weak enamel, and five family members without the condition. They then compared the results with 952 DNA samples from unrelated individuals.

Family members with AI had a mutation on both copies of the gene FAM20A. The four unaffected family members had only one copy of the mutated gene. None of the DNA samples from unrelated people had the mutation.

In mice, a normal version of FAM20A was expressed throughout the teeth, and at particularly high rates when ameleoblasts were maturing, adding weight to the idea that the gene plays a key role in the production of enamel.

Tony Phan, an oral biologist at the University of Western Australia in Crawley, suggests that the protein created by FAM20A may boost the production of enamel by binding to ameloblasts. If so, it may be possible to use the protein to reactivate the enamel-producing cells on damaged teeth to prevent decay taking hold, he says.

Teeth and bone are important and complex structures in humans and other animals, but little is actually known about their chemical structure at the atomic scale. What exactly gives them their renowned toughness, hardness and strength? How do organisms control the synthesis of these advanced functional composites?

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