I wonder…

Last month, I read an article about a new “fusion protein” that’s being developed in China that may prove to be an efficacious vaccine against dental caries. Essentially, researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have spliced together two separate proteins to create what they are calling KF-rPAc. While KF-rPAc provided prophylactic and therapeutic efficiency against caries, it also demonstrated possible side-effects, such as high antigenicity and potential inflammatory injury that restricted its clinical usage. Despite this, experts are positive about its future applications in oral care – and it has wholeheartedly been picked up by the nation’s media as the cure for dental decay.

If, like me, you think this all sounds a bit familiar, it’s because it is. In fact, there have been a myriad of supposed cures that have been developed over the last few years that all purport to be the end of dental caries – and while this is something that we all surely want, I don’t think we should put all our hopes and dreams on any of them.