Might want to reconsider sending your kids to dental school ....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080408/hl_nm/cavities_candy_dc

Cavity-fighting candy helped cut tooth decay: study
By Julie Steenhuysen
Tue Apr 8, 2008

Most children are told to stay away from chewy candies to keep their
teeth cavity-free, but children in Venezuela who ate a special
cavity-fighting candy had 62 percent fewer cavities than those who
brushed their teeth regularly, researchers said on Tuesday.

Children in the study were testing the effectiveness of BasicMints,
an experimental fluoride-free treatment designed to mimic a
component in human saliva that neutralizes acids in the mouth that
can erode tooth enamel.

Researchers at Stony Brook University School of Dental Medicine, who
developed the active compound in the mints known as CaviStat, tested
them in 200 children in Venezuela aged 10 1/2 to 11 who were getting
their adult molars but still had some baby teeth left.

Half the children in the study took two of the medicated mints in
the morning after brushing with a fluoride toothpaste. They followed
the same routine at night. The other half brushed normally twice
daily with fluoride toothpaste and took plain sugarless mints.

After 12 months, children who took the cavity-fighting mints had
61.7 percent fewer cavities than the placebo group.

The soft mints are designed to be dissolved and chewed into the
biting surfaces of the back teeth, where about 90 percent of
cavities in children occur.

"Unlike regular candies, we want this product to be stuck in the
teeth," said Mitchell Goldberg, president of Ortek Therapeutics Inc,
a privately held company in Roslyn Heights, New York, that licensed
the technology from Stony Brook.

Goldberg said in a telephone interview that unlike sugarless gum,
which fights cavities by temporarily increasing the flow of saliva
in the mouth, the mints actively neutralize acids that cause
cavities.

He said the company plans to seek U.S. Food and Drug Administration
approval to begin testing the product in the United States by year
end. It may take several years of testing before it wins U.S.
marketing approval.

The study was published in the March issue of the Journal of
Clinical Dentistry.

(Editing by Doina Chiacu)