Prevention of Tooth Extrinsic Staining Using Experimental Toothpastes Containing Polymers

Objectives: To evaluate the effect of experimental toothpastes (ET) containing four different polymers (LPP: Sodium linear polyphosphate; CHI: Chitosan, HMP: Sodium hexametaphosphate; PP: Sodium pyrophosphate) in preventing tooth extrinsic staining.
Methods: Toothpastes were tested in staining-brushing cycling, using enamel/dentin specimens, which were randomly allocated into 6 groups (n=10): Brushing with artificial saliva (SA- negative control), Colgate total 12 (RT- regular toothpaste), LPP, CHI, HMP, and PP. All polymers were added in the toothpastes in the same concentration (5%). The cycling consisted of chlorhexidine (2min), staining broth (30 min), artificial saliva (30min), and brushing with toothpastes (45 strokes). Tooth color was assessed at baseline and after 21 cycles, using a spectrophotometer, and the color alteration (ΔE₀₀- CIEDE2000, ΔL, Δa, and Δb) was subject to analysis of variance (ANOVA and Tukey tests) with a significance level of 5%.
Results: For ΔE₀₀ (p < 0.001), PP showed the lowest ΔE₀₀ (2.50 ± 0.73), differing significantly from the RT (4.2 ± 1.3) and SA (4.7± 1.3). For ΔL (p=0.494) there were no significant differences between the groups, with positive values only for LPP and CHI. For Δa (p=0.01), only the PP differed from SA, and there were no significant differences among the experimental toothpastes. All the groups showed negative Δa values. For Δb (p=0.078), there were no significant differences between the groups, and all showed positive values.
Conclusions: It can be concluded that the toothpaste containing sodium pyrophosphate was the only experimental product that presented an increased staining prevention efficacy in relation to the regular toothpaste or brushing without toothpaste.