AIMS Levels of enamel hypoplasia in past populations are frequently used to study health. However, few studies have looked at patterning in the occurrence of different types of hypoplasia. In this pilot study, skeletal remains from an Iron Age tomb at Pella in Jordan were analysed for the presence of linear and pit enamel hypoplasia, to investigate enamel hypoplasia aetiology by comparison of t...

AIM The aim of the present in vitro study was the evaluation of two products: a CPP-ACP paste (GC Tooth Mousse, GC Corp.) and a desensitizing toothpaste (Colgate Sensitive Pro Relief, Colgate-Palmolive) on preventing enamel erosion produced by a soft drink (Coca Cola) by using Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). METHODS Thirty enamel specimens were assigned to 6 groups of 5 specimens each. 1: inta...

Periodontitis is primarily a dental plaque induced inflammatory disease. Anatomic factors such as cervical enamel projections, enamel pearls, and developmental grooves are often associated with advanced, localized periodontal destruction. Enamel projections and pearls are mostly associated with molars. Enamel projections in the furcation areas of molars have no true attachment and are therefore...

Enamel structure is of importance in demineralization. Differences in porosity in enamel effect the rate of demineralization, seen between permanent and deciduous teeth. Individual differences have been shown in the mean mineral concentration values in enamel, the role of this in demineralization is not thoroughly investigated. The aim of this study was to study variations of depths of artifici...

Dental enamel is the structure which is first exposed to the attack of dental caries, and the success or failure of this attack depends on many factors, among them the chemical nature and structure of the enamel. Some authors (Pincus, 1939; Gottlieb, 1947) go so far as to postulate that the caries process is initially a proteolytic one. In this connexion the nitrogenous material of enamel is of...

During enamel development, matrix metalloproteinase-20 (MMP-20, enamelysin) is expressed early during the secretory stage as the enamel thickens, and kallikrein-4 (KLK-4, EMSP1) is expressed later during the maturation stage as the enamel hardens. Thus, we investigated whether the physical properties of the secretory-/maturation-stage MMP-20 null enamel were significantly different from those o...

Thick molar enamel is among the few diagnostic characters of hominins which are measurable in fossil specimens. Despite a long history of study and characterization of Paranthropus molars as relatively 'hyper-thick', only a few tooth fragments and controlled planes of section (designed to be proxies of whole-crown thickness) have been measured. Here, we measure molar enamel thickness in Austral...

INTRODUCTION Dental enamel is comprised of highly organized, oriented apatite crystals, but how they form is unclear. METHODS We used focused ion beam (FIB) scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to investigate early enamel formation in 7-week-old incisors from wild-type, Amelx-/-, and Enam-/- C56BL/6 mice. FIB surface imaging scans thicker samples so that the thin enamel ribbons do not pass as r...

Enamel proteins form a scaffold for growing hydroxyapatite crystals during enamel formation. They are then almost completely degraded during enamel maturation, resulting in a protein content of only 1% (w/v) in mature enamel. Nevertheless, this small amount of remaining proteins has important effects on the mechanical and structural properties of enamel and on the electrostatic properties of it...

BACKGROUND The aim of the present study was to test the impact of different toothpastes with Zinc-Hydroxyapatite (Zn-HAP) on preventing and repairing enamel erosion compared to toothpastes with and without fluoride. MATERIAL AND METHODS The following four toothpastes were tested: two toothpastes with Zn-HAP, one toothpaste with fluoride and one toothpaste without fluoride. An additional contr...