Preventing Dentin Erosion by Using Plants?: An in vitro Study

Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate the protective effects of some plant extracts on dentin erosion in vitro.
Methods: 4 experimental groups [distilled water (negative control), Colgate (positive control), green tea and grape seed], each consisting of 20 dentin samples obtained from drawn bovine teeth, were formed. The specimens were exposed to demineralization (0,3% citric acid, pH 2.45, 5 min) and remineralization (artificial saliva, 60 min) three times daily for 3 days as 5 min plant extract application before each erosive episode. At the end of the experiment, the hardness values of all the samples were examined by nanoindentation. Morphological changes on the surface were analyzed by SEM.The data was analyzed using the Kruskal-Wallis test for the comparison of the experimental groups, and the Friedman test for the intra-group evaluations. The significance was set to 0.05.
Results: According to the obtained data, the highest microhardness value is observed in the green tea group whereas the lowest microhardness value is in the samples of the grape seed group. Macromolecular deposits were observed in SEM images of Colgate group
Conclusions: According to the results, it was found that the green tea group showed better results in surface analysis than all other groups, and we can conclude that green tea was effective in preventing dentin erosion.