Dentists urge parents to keep children’s baby teeth as new research shows it could treat cancer

Keeping teeth that fall out during childhood could be a lifesaving move, according to the United States National Center for Biotechnology.

Researchers have found the stem cells in a younger tooth tend to be less exposed to environmental damage than adult teeth and can help regenerate new cell growth in other parts of the body.

It could replace the difficult process of accessing bone marrow from other areas of the body for biological information.

While the new method is still in development, in years to come it could be widely used to help fight cancer and regrow neural cells in the brain to prevent possible heart attacks.

Other uses for human deciduous pulp stem cells (hDPSC) could be to regrow bones, regenerate the liver, treat diabetes, and reproduce eye tissue.

Now dentists are urging parents to hold on to their child’s baby teeth for as long as they can.

Information derived from milk teeth as old as 10 years could help keep the person alive.

In a clinical trial in China, childhood teeth were used to regenerate the new teeth that had grown in 30 patients but was not fully developed.

Last year they announced after some development it could renew the blood vessels and nerve connections in adulthood dental pulp.

Currently apexification is used to encourage root growth when permanent teeth are damaged but it doesn’t replace tissue lost and the patient can still suffer from a dead tooth.

Now dentists are urging patients to hold on to baby teeth to use later on. It could replace the difficult process of accessing bone marrow for stem cells

‘This treatment gives patients sensation back in their teeth,’ Songtao Shi from the University of Pennsylvania said. ‘If you give them a warm or cold stimulation, they can feel it; they have living teeth again.’

Penn Today reported September 2018 that Shi said: ‘So far we have follow-up data for two, two and a half, even three years, and have shown it’s a safe and effective therapy.’

Shi and his team said following the research supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China, the Natural Science Foundation of China and a pilot grant from Penn Dental Medicine, they planned to research how using stem cells from one child’s teeth in another person’s body would turn out.