No abstract

All the available evidence indicates that the incidence of dental caries is related to the frequency of ingestion of sugars. However, the influence of varying intervals between exposure to sugars while keeping the total number of exposures constant is less clear. It was observed that animals that ingested a total of 17 meals daily for 5 weeks at intervals of 10 or 20 min developed approximately 50% fewer lesions than did the animals consuming the same number of meals at 40- and 60-min intervals. Animals which had the highest caries scores harbored the most Streptococcus mutans. Weight gains in all groups were similar, indicating that weight gain alone is not necessarily a reliable indicator of eating patterns.

Several different liquid diets have been proposed to use in tests to determine the cariogenic potential of foods fed to rats. A rat model has been developed to determine the cariogenic potential of foods. This entails feeding animals their essential nutrition in liquid form by means of gastric intubation and the test food on a programmed feeder. Several liquid diets of different nutritional density have been proposed for use in this test. Animals fed either of two of the four diets alone failed to survive the experimental period. It was further observed that the cariogenicity of a cookie fed through a programmed feeder was not affected by the liquid diets administered to the animals. The liquid diets were also without affect on the cariogenicity of diet 2000 fed ad libitum.