Studies on caries occurrence in rats with naturally occurring dental caries.

Abstract

Feeding a normal diet without sugar, we have found a new strain of caries-susceptible rats which develop dental caries naturally. We investigated these spontaneously occurring dental caries (SDC) rats, and their control (CSC) rats, in which dental caries were not detected during the experimental period. Most of the carious lesions were found in fissure caries of the SDC rats, and many of the lesions were found in the mandibular first and second molars, only a few carious lesions were found in the mandibular third molars and maxillary molars. This pattern of dental caries was extremely different from that in rats which were given a cariogenic diet containing high sucrose. It is suggested that SDC and CSC rats are more suitable models for comparison with human dental caries.