Abstract
Many Japanese children are believed to have some problems with their eating behaviour, and there is a significant concern regarding possible change in their jaw bone structure. In addition, more and more dentists's attention has been directed to the influences of systemic bone debility in the dental field, for instance, on bone repair after reorganization of periodontitis, or prognosis of an implant. Therefore, the necessity of objective evaluation on bone formation in mandibles has been increasing. There are some methods regarding bone mineral content for investigating the internal bone structure. However, there was only a few reports regarding the bone mineral content in jaw bone. A quantitative determination of minerals in the jaw bone is difficult because of inclusion of the teeth. In this review, we described about the bone mineral content on mandible using microdensitometry and continued by peripheral Quantitative Computed Tomography. Further, we described the dietary therapy of Unical^[○!R] made from sea shell and grape seed proanthocyanidins extract (GSPE), a kind of flavonoid. Our results suggest that both UNICAL and GSPE therapy caused an increase of bone formation in rat mandible.
