Fighting the fight for healthy teeth

Inside a tooth odontoblast cells sit between the enamel and pulp and produce a layer of dentin to protect the pulp from wear and infection. This research shows that, when under attack from bacteria, the odontoblast cells also orchestrate an immune response, producing antimicrobial peptides (defensins) to fight the infection directly, protein messangers (chemokines) which recruit white blood cells to the site of infection, and pro-inflammatory signalling proteins (IL-1β, IL-1α, and TNF-α) which, in turn, initiate an inflammatory response.

Dr Orapin Horst also found that the odontoblast layer produced proteins involved in the down-regulation of this inflammatory response, such as toll-interacting protein (TOLLIP), TGF-β, and IL-10, which help protect the underlying pulp from inflammatory damage.

Dr Horst says that "For the first time we now have targets to control irreversible inflammatory damage to teeth".

More information: Caries Induced Cytokine Network in the Odontoblast Layer of Human Teeth, Orapin V. Horst, Jeremy A. Horst, Ram Samudrala, Beverly A. Dale, BMC Immunology (in press).

Provided by BioMed Central