Eggshell "Glue" Will Help Fix Tooth Dentures

13:22, July 2, 2021

The chemical composition and structure of the material imitates the natural tooth tissue

Physicists and medics from Voronezh State University, Burdenko Voronezh State Medical University (Voronezh), Ural Federal University together with colleagues working at the Australian Synchrotron (Clayton) have developed a special "glue", reports Naked Science. The "glue" imitates the natural tooth tissue in its properties and composition (similar in chemical composition and structure).

One of the main components of the "glue" scientists got from the eggshells, so it is stronger than any other, attached fillings to the patient's own teeth, thus increasing their longevity. In addition, the technology will allow individually for each person to select the most compatible materials for the restoration of teeth. The results of the work supported by a grant from the Russian Science Foundation (RSF) have been published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.

In modern dentistry doctors use artificial materials for restoration of damaged parts of teeth, so-called dental composites: they form the basis of usual dental fillings. Composites, as well as a kind of "glue" that fastens the filling, have properties and chemical composition that are very different from natural dental tissue - dentin. This makes them poorly bond to the human tooth, which sometimes leads to the loss of fillings.

Scientists used an artificial polymeric material which is widely used in medicine and added to it a substituted hydroxyapatite carbonate derived from eggshells. Natural hydroxyapatite is found in various hard tissues - teeth, bones, eggshells - so the "glue" based on it well imitates the structure and properties of dentin.

To test the effectiveness of the development, scientists placed fillings on real teeth that had previously been removed by doctors for medical reasons. They fixed some of the fillings with the new "glue" and some with commercial dental fillings.

The researchers then made thin slices of the teeth and used infrared light to analyze their structure. It turned out that due to its high resemblance to the natural tooth tissue, the "glue" developed by the scientists formed stable bonds with dentin and more reliably secured the artificial filling material.

"With this approach we will be able to select "glue", very close in properties and chemical composition to the teeth of a particular patient. In the future, our research team hopes to create not just a layer, but an entire tissue, which will allow to replace damaged tooth parts not with artificial fillings, but with a material as similar to the natural one as possible," says Pavel Seredin, the head of the Department of Solid State Physics and Nanostructures of VSU, leading researcher of the Research and Educational Center "Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology" of UrFU.