So, you’re not happy with the way you look,
but after a silicone implant or two in your butt, some digging and scraping around the
belly area to give you a chiseled six-pack, a bit off the nose and an extension of the
top lip, you think you are getting there. The problem is, you ate too many candies when
you were a kid and your teeth are in terrible shape. One root canal led to another, and before
you knew it your mouth was a network of dead nerves and expensive silver crowns. “One day,” said your dentist, “all these
will have to come out.” You really don’t like the thought of having
false teeth. And that was a reality for many people, until
now, because re-growing teeth is coming to a dental surgery near you. In 2018 the U.S. media told us that a “revolution”
was underway in dental care. It’s about time, too. If you look at the statistics, in the U.S.
alone around 91 percent of people aged 21 to 64 have regular dental problems. Those of you watching this have no doubt had
many trips to the ‘chair’, not always welcomed, and often feared. According to the American College of Prosthodontists
– those are the people who replace your ailing fangs and their friends– around 15
percent of the edentulous population in the USA has false teeth made every year. “Edentulous”, that’s a word you’ve
never heard. Well, it simply means people who are lacking
teeth. That same college said there are many of these
people in the U.S., and around 36 million Americans are missing a lot of teeth. 120 million Americans are at least missing
one tooth, with the reason simply being wear and tear in most cases, but cancer and gum
disease might also be the problem. The organization also wrote, “In the geriatric
population the ratio of edentulous individuals is 2 to 1. About 23 million are completely edentulous
and about 12 million are edentulous in one arch.” What we are trying to say of course is that
losing teeth is hardly something none of us can relate to. It’s part of life, whether you got your
tooth knocked out by a zealous soccer defender or you just overdid it with the sugar. Although it’s a fairly normal thing to happen,
it also something we all dread. So much so, that losing teeth is actually
a very common nightmare. Losing your teeth, say the brain experts,
means you think you are losing control of your life. It makes sense. But what if you didn’t have to lose teeth
anymore? What if you could grow them back? Wouldn’t that be great. Well, it seems that’s where we are heading. What’s been happening in the lab of late
proves teeth can be regrown and we may never need a prosthetic tooth again. How it’s done is almost like a magic trick,
because scientists have literally been fooling the mouth. What’s been happening is they have been
using a laser beam, in the words of NBC, “to coax dental stem cells to form dentin, the
hard tissue similar to bone that makes up most of a tooth.” Yep, a laser can make your mouth want to regrow
teeth. And this is not just a mere possibility, it’s
worked on rats and mice in the lab. One day the poor lab rat was struggling to
get through a whole carrot and a few weeks later he was chomping on those hard orange
sticks with abandon. But a world in which no one ever needs to
have a toothless mouth again, where cavities and cancer will never mean a molar will go
missing for good, is this possible? Well, apparently the researchers did say the
procedure of re-growing teeth could mean people will never need root canals again, but growing
the entire tooth has been problematic because the laser thing didn’t grow back the enamel. That’s the stuff that coats your teeth. So, you can grow back the main part of the
tooth, but the product won’t be finished. Regeneration, said those scientists, is the
next big thing. The bad news, though, according to Dr Nigel
Carter, the Chief Executive of the Oral Health Foundation, is that the procedure is still
a way off from being an everyday reality. He did say, though, that it’s going to happen. We will just have to wait a while. It won’t be too long, and 22 rats in one
study can tell you that because those little animals got their mouths completely re-filled
with teeth after getting the laser touch. Scientists at the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative
Medicine Laboratory at Columbia University Medical Center said that indeed teeth can
be re-grown without using harvested stem cell lines or by creating a new environment outside
of the body. In other words, all you need is that laser
beam and in the rat study those guys got back their teeth in just nine weeks. This is what was written about those toothy
rats, “In each of 22 rats, they implanted an incisor scaffold orthotopically in mandibular
incisor extraction pockets and a human molar scaffold ectopically in the dorsum. They then infused the scaffolds' microchannels
with two growth factors. They also implanted growth-factor–free control
scaffolds.” That might not mean much to you, but let’s
just say that once gummy vermin were treated to a new set of strong teeth. Those researchers said this was a huge thing,
because it’s the first time anything like it has been done. They also said it’s coming to humans, and
in time is going to start saving people a ton of money. As many of you know, a couple of root canals
and shiny crowns can be painful and also very costly. In fact, many people these days opt for something
called medical tourism, which can mean travelling halfway across the world to get their work
done in a cheaper county. Researchers in another paper said we might
become like sharks. In case you didn’t know, sharks are the
most amazing tooth re-growers in the animal world. They might lose a tooth after struggling to
tear apart a plastic 7-Up bottle they thought was a tasty fish, but then another tooth will
move in to replace it. It’s as if they have a conveyor belt of
teeth, said one researcher, and us humans might well get the same thing too in time. Scientists in China are also growing new teeth
for animals, but it seems they threw a few humans in the study and it worked for them,
too. We found this written about their research,
“In a new study, Xuan et al. implanted ex vivo expanded autologous tooth stem cells
from deciduous teeth in two animal models and in human patients. They demonstrated regeneration of dental pulp
containing an odontoblast layer, blood vessels, and nerves in the implanted teeth and rescue
of sensation to stimuli such as temperature.” Again, that all sounds confusing, but what
it really means is some animals and some people got new teeth. So there you go, many of you watching this
might in the near future be treated to some new teeth after you lose them. More clinical trials have to be done, but
from what we can see it’s going to happen.
