King's College London researchers have found a method of stimulating the stem cells inside of teeth in order to generate new dentine mineral, potentially reducing the need to use man-made materials to treat cavities:
A new method of stimulating the renewal of living stem cells in tooth pulp using an Alzheimer's drug has been discovered by a team of researchers at King's College London. Following trauma or an infection, the inner, soft pulp of a tooth can become exposed and infected. In order to protect the tooth from infection, a thin band of dentine is naturally produced and this seals the tooth pulp, but it is insufficient to effectively repair large cavities. Currently dentists use man-made cements or fillings, such as calcium and silicon-based products, to treat these larger cavities and fill holes in teeth. This cement remains in the tooth and fails to disintegrate, meaning that the normal mineral level of the tooth is never completely restored.
However, in a paper published today in Scientific Reports, scientists from the Dental Institute at King's College London have proven a way to stimulate the stem cells contained in the pulp of the tooth and generate new dentine – the mineralised material that protects the tooth - in large cavities, potentially reducing the need for fillings or cements.
Promotion of natural tooth repair by small molecule GSK3 antagonists (open, DOI: 10.1038/srep39654) (DX)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12 2017, @07:21PM
Anyone else notice an uptick in "meme" type comments? Shall we truly devolve into a hybrid of reddit/4chan/wikipedia/ and, god forbid, youtube comments?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12 2017, @07:26PM
Whut you talkin bout dudebro I don't even?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12 2017, @07:34PM
These damn kids better get off my lawn I tell you hwut!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12 2017, @07:40PM
You mean those damn hipster kids are disrupting your lawn with their apps! Why won't you drop dead old luddite your house is a dead zone in our mesh network. One of these nights we're just going to break into your place and install mesh nodes in your attic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12 2017, @09:19PM
Meanwhile in Soviet Russia...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 13 2017, @01:32AM
... networks join you!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday January 12 2017, @07:45PM
Yeah, it's called trolling. On stories that typically get less than 20 comments, one troll can dominate with little effort.
Game over, Soylent.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12 2017, @08:10PM
If you want a higher signal to noise ratio, go hang out with the cool kids over at Hacker News where Social Justice is queen, trolls get Zero Tolerance, and the kids literally do Show-And-Tell like a bunch of kindergartners.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12 2017, @09:04PM
That's true and rather than let people mod whomever they like, the site has restrictions on how many times you can mod the same person in the same day.
Which is rather ridiculous. If somebody is trolling with 5 posts, you should be able to downmod all of them. That kind of restriction unbalances things even further than just the limit on the number of mod points people get.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12 2017, @08:08PM
NO. The meme market is real! I have well over a quadrillion dollars in it!!!!!!!!!111!!!!!