Seaweed joins fight against tooth decay

Brushing your teeth with seaweed first thing in the morning might not seem like the nicest way to start the day, but according to researchers in UK it could prove an effective defence against tooth decay.

Researchers at Newcastle University’s school of dental sciences say that enzymes from seaweed microbes have been shown to break down plaque, which builds up in difficult to reach parts of the mouth.

Dr Nick Jakubovics said: “Plaque on your teeth is made up of bacteria which join together to colonise an area in a bid to push out any potential competitors. Traditional toothpastes work by scrubbing off the plaque containing the bacteria – but that’s not always effective – which is why people who religiously clean their teeth can still develop cavities.

“Work in a test tube has shown that this enzyme can cut through the plaque or layer of bacteria and we want to harness this power into a paste, mouthwash or denture cleaning solution.”

Originally the team of researchers had been studying the marine bacterium Bacillus licheniformis for the purposes of cleaning ships’ hulls. However they then set about extracting the enzyme to see if it could be useful in preventing tooth decay.

The leader of the research, Professor Burgess, said it was an exciting breakthrough and could lead to significant improvements in dental hygiene: “It’s an amazing phenomenon. When I initially began researching how to break down these layers of bacteria, I was interested in how we could keep the hulls of ships clear, but we soon realised that the mechanism we had discovered had much wider uses.

“If we can contain it within toothpaste we could be creating a product which could prevent too decay. This is just one of the uses we are developing for the enzyme as it has huge potential, such as in helping keep clean medical implants such as artificial hips and speech valves which also suffer from biofilm infection.”