Newly Developed Long-Term Effective Dental Desensitizing Agent

Objectives: Dentinal hypersensitivity (DH) is a common problem. Our novel alginate-microcapsule encapsulated potassium-nitrate was used to be a desensitizing agent.
Methods: Teeth samples were eroded to mimic clinical situation and randomly separated into 4 groups: "no-erosion", "eroded but no treatment", "eroded and treated by Sensodyne®", "eroded and treated by alginate-microcapsule". The efficiency of damaged surface smoothing and exposed dentinal tubule filling rate were measured. Statistical significances were determined using Student's t-test (p < 0.05).
Results: This microcapsule was prepared by ultrasonic-emulsion and selected 330-nm size (figure 1). The efficiency of damaged surface smoothing and exposed dentinal tubule filling rate were shown in figure 2.
Conclusions: Our newly developed desensitizing agent was mostly composed of alginate, which presented better biocompatibility and biodegradability than commercial CPM products. It possessed the characteristic of slowly-released potassium nitrate,which induced long term desensitized effect, showing potential on DH therapy.