Professor Hill explains the technology behind Biomin F.
Article from Dentistry.co.uk
Snippet:
What are the main benefits of including fluoride within the glass, rather than soluble fluorides that are present in most toothpastes?
When you take a normal fluoride toothpaste with a soluble fluoride such as sodium fluoride or sodium monofluorophosphate, studies show that because the user is continually producing saliva and swallowing it throughout the day, the fluoride is being diluted in the mouth with time. After about 100 minutes, depending on people’s salivary volumes and salivary flow rates, the fluoride concentration has dropped below a therapeutic value. We put the fluoride into the glass particles, which are designed to stick to the teeth. The glass particles dissolve over around 12 hours, so you get a slow release of fluoride, and that’s what you want. You don’t want high concentrations of fluoride at any point, because then you tend to form calcium fluoride, rather than the fluoridated apatite. So the glass is a slow release vehicle for fluoride, making much more effective use of it. In the Biomin F toothpaste we’ve got about a third of the fluoride content of a conventional toothpaste, but in terms of promoting remineralisation it works far more effectively, even though we’ve got a lower concentration of fluoride. In order to remineralise and form apatite you need a source of calcium phosphate. In some cases where you have patients with a good salivary flow and there’s a plentiful supply of calcium and phosphate, that’s not an issue. But in a lot of patients with caries or dry mouth conditions, the saliva is not good quality and tends to be low in calcium and phosphates. So actually delivering calcium and phosphate with the fluoride is much more effective.