Researchers develop sugar-free candy that fights bacteria causing tooth decay

There is good news for candy lovers as a new 'sugar-free' candy promised to reduce the number of cavity-causing bacteria on the teeth.

The candy containing dead bacteria that bind to the bacteria most likely to cause cavities has been developed by Christine Lang of the Berlin biotech firm Organobalance and her colleagues. Experimental use has found that those who ate the candy were found to have lower levels of "bad" bacteria in their mouths as against those who did not.

Cavities are caused by acid released by bacteria on the surface of a person's teeth after the person eats food.

According to researchers, the strain of bacteria most likely to cause cavities is mutans streptococci.

The researchers have found that another type of bacteria, Lactobacillus paracasei, found in kefir, reduced levels of mutans streptococci and decreased the number of cavities in rats.

Sugar on the surface of L paracasei bonded with mutans streptococci.

According to researchers, by binding with mutans streptococci, L paracasei prevented mutans streptococci from re-attaching to teeth.

Lang and her team developed a sugar-free candy containing heat-killed samples of the bacteria and then tested the candy on a group of 60 volunteers.

Of the cohort, a third ate candies with one milligram of L paracasei, one third ate candies with two milligrams while one third ate candies having the same taste, but had no bacteria.

Each of the subjects ate five candies over a one-and-a-half-day period and at the end of the experiment, around three fourths of the volunteers who had eaten candies with bacteria were found to have lower levels of mutans streptococci in their saliva than they had had the day before.

Subjects who consumed candies having 2 mg of bacteria were found to have reduced levels of streptococci after eating the first candy.