Dragon Fruit Extracts (Hylocereus undatus) For Reparative Dentin Formation

Objectives: Dental caries is a chronic disease that affects everyone. The progress of dental caries can be controlled by placing medicament that could promote the formation of reparative dentin. Reparative dentin is the reaction of the pulp to external stimuli, wherein newly differentiated odontoblastic cells were formed. Calcium Hydroxide stimulates the odontoblast, a dentin forming cell, to form the reparative dentin. Objective: The study sought to determine if the Calcium Hydroxide of dragon fruit (Hylocereus undatus) extracts can promote the formation of reparative dentin.
Methods: Experimental method was used to extract the Calcium Hydroxide from the dragon fruit. Second phase of the experiment was carried out in vivo after passing the University Internal Ethics Regulation Committee (IERC). Two groups of human teeth samples with caries were selected and prepared (Class C depth). Group 1 was applied with dragon fruit extracts and Group 2 was applied with the commercially available Calcium Hydroxide paste. After 6 weeks the teeth samples were subjected to histological examination.
Results: Histological examination revealed that Group 1 and 2 exhibited a formation of reparative dentin, the former showed a larger zone of reparative dentin.
Conclusions: Dragon fruit has Calcium Hydroxide which can promote the formation of reparative dentin. Furthermore, dragon fruit extracts provides better result than the commercially available Calcium Hydroxide by forming greater zone of odontoblastic processes and effective for the reparative dentin formation.