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Hervé
29th May 2014, 14:12
[ Mod-edit: The first five posts of this thread began life on the thread Breakthrough ! ? Lasers stimulating tooth repair (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?71806-Breakthrough---Lasers-stimulating-tooth-repair&p=839485&viewfull=1#post839485). -- Paul. ]

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... so there must be some kind of harmonic resonance at work:

Ultrasound Regrows Damaged Teeth (http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/003556.html)
July 02, 2006

University of Alberta scientists have developed a wearable microminiature ultrasound generator that causes damaged teeth to generate more tooth material. (http://www5.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-06/uoa-umh062806.php)
Hockey players, rejoice! A team of University of Alberta researchers has created technology to regrow teeth--the first time scientists have been able to reform human dental tissue.

Using low-intensity pulsed ultrasound (LIPUS), Dr. Tarak El-Bialy from the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry and Dr. Jie Chen and Dr. Ying Tsui from the Faculty of Engineering have created a miniaturized system-on-a-chip that offers a non-invasive and novel way to stimulate jaw growth and dental tissue healing.

"It's very exciting because we have shown the results and actually have something you can touch and feel that will impact the health of people in Canada and throughout the world," said Chen, who works out of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the National Institute for Nanotechnology.

The wireless design of the ultrasound transducer means the miniscule device will be able to fit comfortably inside a patient's mouth while packed in biocompatible materials. The unit will be easily mounted on an orthodontic or "braces" bracket or even a plastic removable crown. The team also designed an energy sensor that will ensure the LIPUS power is reaching the target area of the teeth roots within the bone. TEC Edmonton, the U of A's exclusive tech transfer service provider, filed the first patent recently in the U.S. Currently, the research team is finishing the system-on-a-chip and hopes to complete the miniaturized device by next year.

"If the root is broken, it can now be fixed," said El-Bialy. "And because we can regrow the teeth root, a patient could have his own tooth rather than foreign objects in his mouth."

The device is aimed at those experiencing dental root resorption, a common effect of mechanical or chemical injury to dental tissue caused by diseases and endocrine disturbances. Mechanical injury from wearing orthodontic braces causes progressive root resorption, limiting the duration that braces can be worn. This new device will work to counteract the destructive resorptive process while allowing for the continued wearing of corrective braces. With approximately five million people in North America presently wearing orthodontic braces, the market size for the device would be 1.4 million users.
This would allow more rapid realignment of teeth for those undergoing orthodontic therapy.

El-Bialy had previously demonstrated this effect using a larger ultrasound generator. He teamed up with other faculty and developed a wearable device so that the benefit could be had more easily. His previous research showed that the ultrasound also helped cause damaged bones to repair. (http://www.engineering.ualberta.ca/news.cfm?story=47557)
El-Bialy has shown in earlier research that ultrasound waves, the high frequency sound waves normally used for diagnostic imaging, help bones heal and tooth material grow.

"I was using ultrasound to stimulate bone formation after lower-jaw lengthening in rabbits," El-Bialy said in an interview Tuesday.

To his surprise, not only did he help heal the rabbits' jaws after the surgery, but their teeth started to grow as well.
He foresees the day when people with broken bones will wear ultrasound emittters wrapped into the bandages.

This approach by itself probably can't solve the problem of growing replacements for entirely missing teeth. However, ultrasound might help stimulate tooth building cells once scientists develop techniques for creating suitable cells. Still, additional problems must be solved to get tooth building cells to produce the particular tooth shape desired.

Randall Parker, 2006 July 02 07:22 PM Biotech Teeth And Gums (http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/cat_biotech_teeth_and_gums.html)


LIPUS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_intensity_pulsed_ultrasound)
Low-intensity pulsed ultrasound

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Low-intensity pulsed ultrasound (LIPUS) is a medical technology, generally using 1.5 MHz frequency pulses, with a pulse width of 200 μs, repeated at 1 kHz, at an intensity of 30 mW/cm2, 20 minutes/day.

Applications of LIPUS include:


Promoting bone-fracture healing.[1] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_intensity_pulsed_ultrasound#cite_note-1)
Treating orthodontically induced root resorption (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_resorption).[2] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_intensity_pulsed_ultrasound#cite_note-2)
Regrow missing teeth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teeth).[citation needed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed)]
Enhancing mandibular growth in children with hemifacial microsomia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemifacial_microsomia).[3] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_intensity_pulsed_ultrasound#cite_note-3)
Promoting healing in various soft tissues such as cartilage, inter vertebral disc.[4] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_intensity_pulsed_ultrasound#cite_note-4)
Improving muscle healing after laceration injury.[5] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_intensity_pulsed_ultrasound#cite_note-5)

Researchers at the University of Alberta (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Alberta) have used LIPUS to gently massage teeth roots (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gums) and jawbones (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jawbones) to cause growth or regrowth, and have grown new teeth in rabbits after lower jaw surgical lengthening (Distraction osteogenesis) (American Journal of Orthodontics, 2002). As of June 2006, a larger device has been licensed by the Food and Drug Administration (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_and_Drug_Administration) (FDA) and Health Canada (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_Canada) for use by orthopedic surgeons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthopedic_surgeons). A smaller device that fits on braces has also been developed but is still in the investigational stage and is not available to the public.

Lipus is used in the Exogen bone stimulator for use in acute fractures and nonunions of bone. It has not yet been approved by either Canadian or American regulatory bodies for teeth and a market-ready model is currently being prepared. LIPUS was expected to be commercially available before the end of 2012. The LIPUS foundation website currently announces that Lipus-Plasma application units are available for rental in the USA.[6] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_intensity_pulsed_ultrasound#cite_note-6) Though reports from the University of Alberta and the independent company SmileSonica indicate that the owner of the LIPUS foundation has no affiliation with the medical community.

According to Dr. Chen from the University of Alberta, LIPUS may also have medical/cosmetic benefits in allowing people to grow taller by stimulating bone growth. However it has not been shown to be able to help in bone longitudinal growth when combined with bioengineered cartilage pellets for growth plate induced fractures [7] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_intensity_pulsed_ultrasound#cite_note-7)

LIPUS has also been found to stimulate the proliferaton of chondrocytes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chondrocyte).[8] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_intensity_pulsed_ultrasound#cite_note-8)


See also


Ultrasound (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrasound)
Tooth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tooth)
Dentistry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dentistry)
Transcranial Pulsed Ultrasound (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_Pulsed_Ultrasound)

Maia Gabrial
29th May 2014, 14:30
I remember Witchy1 posted something on this device about 2 years ago, AmerZo. The article had said that it could regrow teeth, too; as well as heal teeth and gums. However, the article said that it wouldn't be available to the public for awhile. I guess time was needed so that people would forget this technology even existed.

Hervé
29th May 2014, 14:51
Found it: Grow your own teeth (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?8650-Grow-your-own-teeth)

Maia Gabrial
29th May 2014, 15:02
Yep, that's it! Thanks!

DeDukshyn
30th May 2014, 01:53
Found it: Grow your own teeth (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?8650-Grow-your-own-teeth)

Yup, thanks for posting that -- I was going to start digging for the original news article, I had forgotten it was even posted here; you seem to have everything at your fingertips ;)

Cara
30th May 2014, 06:06
I have some personal experience with ultrasound to grow bones.

My younger sister had osteomyelitis in the 80s, starting about '82. It was in her left knee. The doctors struggled for a couple years through various surgical procedures to remove the infection completely. It didn't help that she was allergic to most of huge antibiotics available at the time.

Anyway, during this time the growth of her leg was severely affected. It did not grow much at all. They tried a couple different things to get her leg to grow. One of which was ultrasound. They scraped bone from her hip, placed these shavings in her knee, put the whole thing in a cast and embedded in the cast was an ultrasound generator which ran through cycles throughout the day. I was very young at the time so don't remember everything but I do remember the doctors and my parents being disappointed with the results.

Finally after a couple of other experiments, the doctors tried a procedure that is fairly well know today - an Illizarov (spelling may be off here). This was apparently firs tried on dwarves in Russia to stretch their limbs. What they did for my sister is cut through her shin and thigh bones below and above the illness affected knee bones, put pins perpendicularly through the bones above and below these cuts and then connect these pins to a system of rings and bolts outside of her leg. Then through a long painful process the gap was gradually stretched apart over about a year. Across the two gaps they grew her leg 16 cm in this time. Needless to say it was a horrendously painful process.

Anyway, I sure hope the ultrasound has improved since they tried it on my sister and, if so, it would be wonderful if others were able to benefit and have the choice not to go with the Illizarov procedure.