Effects of Dietary Composition on Tooth Decay in the Albino Rat

Abstract

Weanling caries-susceptible albino rats were used as the experimental subjects in a series of investigations to determine whether the initiation and development of carious lesions would be influenced by dietary procedures already demonstrated to alter the incidence of tooth decay in caries-susceptible cotton rats. The isocaloric substitution of fat and protein for part of the sucrose in the purified ration resulted in substantial reductions in the incidence of tooth decay in comparison to that in the control rats. Administration of either mineralized fresh or evaporated milk as the sole source of nutrients resulted in extremely low degrees of dental decay. The addition of 10% of sucrose by weight to either mineralized fresh or evaporated milk did not result in any appreciable increase in tooth decay above the average for the animals on the comparable milk diets alone. Caloric restriction resulted in appreciable less tooth decay than in the control rats which were allowed to eat ad libitum. In each of the above results, the influence of dietary variation on the initiation and development of carious lesions in the caries-susceptible white rat is extremely comparable to the effect obtained with the same regimens in cotton rats. In contrast, the type of caging arrangement employed throughout the experimental period was not found to influence tooth decay in the white rat, unlike its strong influence in the cotton rat.