Clinical Trial to Examine Dental Stain Induction and Removal

Objectives: The objectives of this clinical study were to examine induction of dental stain by foods and stain removal efficacy of a dentifrice containing calcium peroxide and calcium phosphate (Robell Research, NY).

Methods: Forty adult subjects participated in this monadic, investigator-blind, two phase clinical trial. To evaluate the stain removal efficacy and reduce investigator variability, teeth color was measured objectively using the Easyshade Spectrometer (Vident, Germany). Color of maxillary and mandibular anterior teeth was measured in triplicate in the middle-third of the teeth and the values averaged to obtain the final tooth color. After baseline color measurements, the subjects entered the first phase, whereby they ate a prescribed diet consisting of chromomeric foods including grape juice, blueberry pie, chocolate and tea or coffee and refrained from eating, drinking or brushing for thirty minutes. Teeth color was then measured to evaluate the extent of stain accumulation. For the phase two, the subjects burnished their anterior teeth with their fingers using the test dentifrice for two minutes and tooth color was remeasured. The color difference between phases was calculated by assigning a numerical value to each spectrometer tab and calculating the number of tabs.

Results: The numerical scores were: baseline, 4.37 (+/- 2.37); phase one, 6.55 (+/- 3.03) and phase two, 3.72 (+/- 2.33). The changes in Vita tabs were: baseline D2-A2; phase one, C1-C2 and phase two B2-D2. Statistical analysis of the means (t-test) showed significant differences between numerical scores obtained at baseline and the two phases of the study (p<0.05).

Conclusions: The results show that under the study conditions, food induces dental stain; the test dentifrice removes the induced stain and improves tooth color.