LOCAL AND SYSTEMIC CARIOGENIC EFFECTS OF REFINED DEXTROSE SOLUTION FED TO ONE ANIMAL IN PARABIOSIS

THE clinical impression of the deleterious effects of a highly refined carbo-hydrate diet on human teeth has been strengthened by the findings of Koehne and Bunting, ' Boyd,2 and others. Animal experimentation by Shibata, ' Mc-Clure,4 Keyes,5 Elvehjem,6 and Sognnaes7 adduced similar findings. Lund-quist's8 study of oral sugar clearance indicates that deproteinized fasting saliva from normal individuals is sugar free and that hyperglycemia, whether patho-logic or due to high consumption of sugar, does not entail any transfer of sugar to the saliva. Furthermore, he stated that the saliva becomes sugar containing only in so far as carbohydrates are secondarily dissolved in it, and that a high sugar concentration in the saliva, in conjunction with prolonged clearance time, entails increased caries activity. At the present time, investigations concerning the etiology of dental caries suggest that initiation of dental caries may be an acidogenic or a proteolytic process. The large number of individual variations inherent in both animal and human experimental material has impeded our understanding of the denta