Abstract
The purpose of this study was to simplify the glucose clearance test as a clinical test for caries activity in dental practice. Dental caries is commonly recognized as a multi-factorial disease, and the incidence and progress of dental caries are thought to be influenced by various oral environmental factors. There are many caries activity tests that evaluate these oral environmental factors. The best way to evaluate caries activity is to consider the results of a number of caries activity tests.
Glucose clearance time is considered to be the factor which affects the acid production of plaque. Therefore, it is important to evaluate both glucose clearance time and the acid productivity of plaque. I performed two studies, one was to clarify the ability of the glucose clearance test to evaluate the oral environment, and the other was to simplify this test for clinical use.
The results obtained were as follows.
1) There was a positive correlation between glucose clearance test and DMF tooth number (p<0.05).
2) The values of pH, buffer capacity of stimulated whole saliva, and pH of resting whole saliva in a low caries prevalent group were significantly higher than in a high caries prevalent group (p<0.05).
3) The high caries prevalent group showed significantly higher positive values of Caricstat® than the low caries prevalent group (p<0.05).
4) There were multi-collinearities among the oral environmental factors.
5) The eigen value of each factor was calculated by principal component analysis. There was negative correlation between glucose clearance time and buffer capacity of stimulated whole saliva.
6) Decreasing glucose concentration in saliva was found to be a two-step process, especially when rinsing the mouth with 10% (G10) and 20% glucose (G20).
7) In rinsing with 5% glucose (G5), the two-step process was not clear.
8) According to the principal component analysis, there were differences among G5, G10, and G20 in the first component. In G5, the eigen value of buffer capacity of stimulated whole saliva was the most negative value in first principal component. For G10, the eigen value of flow rate of stimulated whole saliva was the most negative value against glucose concentration of saliva.
9) 5% gluccse solution was thought to be better than the other concentrations for clinical use.
10) For clinical effectiveness, I recommend that the glucose concentration in resting whole saliva be measured 4-6 minutes after the rinsing the mouth with 5% glucose solution.
