This process is reversible in the early stages through intake of calcium, phosphate and fluoride
The measures that help prevent and stop tooth decay include:

* Proper dental hygiene, including:
or brushing teeth with fluoride toothpaste after meals or at least twice a day
or flossing your teeth and gums daily. Bacteria living between the teeth can only be removed with floss or interdental cleaners.
or regular dental checkups and teeth cleaning
* Limiting the amount of sugar and carbohydrates you eat and drink, including:
Honey
Sodas
Sweet
Cakes
Cookies
Other sweets
* Rinse your mouth with water after eating sugars
* Replace your toothbrush every 3 to 4 months
* Avoid drinks containing sugar (including fruit juices), especially in baby bottles, and careful brushing can help prevent childhood tooth decay

Talk to your dentist about the use of a sealant, a protective plastic covering that is applied to the chewing surfaces of teeth. This is the location where initial tooth decay begins. The sealer usually takes 5 to 10 years.

Prevention is particularly important for children, especially after emerging permanent teeth. Supplemental fluoride in early childhood (with dose adjustment for the amount of natural or added fluoride in local water supplies) can prevent early caries. Fluoride can also be applied to permanent teeth as a “paint” long-acting, but usually requires revarnishing at least twice a year

The human race is the only one with serious problems of decay ” La Leche League insists that “a small percentage of breastfed children develops caries although breast milk is not your fault,” adding “when it raises weaning should take into account the multiple benefits of milk Breast milk versus artificial, so it should respect the decision of the mother. Instead of proposing a weaning because of caries, the dentist should investigate the root cause of the problem.

” The earlier the better detection The main problem of tooth decay is found in time. We may seem impossible that a baby can develop such a problem, since I always associate it with an adult, making dental visits are delayed until sometimes too late. Pediatricians often fail to recognize the early symptoms, partly because it is not their job (this would correspond to dentists for children).

Recent Cavities are often not seen with the naked eye and require certain devices to be discovered, in contrast, whether longstanding are often easily. Infants and children with caries have a good chance of also developing it in their permanent teeth, so the problem is quite serious.

Several factors can cause tooth decay. The main cause is a diet rich in sugars that help bacteria to eat away the enamel, although depending on the type of sugar, its incidence varies. Other causes include poor dental hygiene, the absence of fluoride in the water and own genetics, as proved that causes tooth decay in some children are especially sensitive to continue despite prophylactic correct habits.

While the bacteria S. mutans is primarily responsible for tooth decay, have found other factors that also show an unexpected correlation with this problem: complications during pregnancy or delivery, premature birth or cesarean delivery, maternal diabetes, kidney disease, Rh incompatibility, allergies, frequent gastroenteritis and chronic diarrhea. A diet high in salt and low in iron and pacifier use also seem to favor the development of caries.

Before the first tooth, about half of children aged 6 months and are infected with Streptococcus mutans. According to research, at 24 months of age 84% of children had developed a substantial colony. Factors associated with these cases were the intake of sweetened drinks at bedtime, taking too many sweet foods, snack between meals, sharing food with adults and a high presence of these bacteria in the mother. By contrast, the absence of bacteria was associated primarily with regular brushing of teeth.
Bottle tooth decay

Once teeth begin to erupt, one of the most common causes of its appearance is called baby bottle tooth decay caused by frequent contact with milk or juice, especially if you leave the baby with a bottle to bed, using it as a pacifier. If your baby needs a bottle to use as a pacifier, it is imperative that only contains water. Never wet with honey or sugar.

Caries appears as white spots on teeth, plaque deposits or brownish tartar and can lead to small fractures or cavities. The destruction of the tooth extends to spread the permanent tooth that is still hidden.

Once you start, it’s matter of time before it spreads and attacks the entire dentition. Incidence It is considered that caries is the most common infectious disease in American children (5 to 8 times more than asthma), with 8.4% of affected children under two years and 40.4% at 5 years .

Of these, 47% of children between two and nine years never treated. The cavities in baby teeth is one of the main reasons for hospitalization in children and has a high health care costs.

The main culprit of tooth decay is a bacterium called Streptococcus mutans (or S. mutans). This bacterium is transmitted from the saliva of the mother or caregiver to the child during its first 30 months of age and resides in the dentition, so that at least the child must have a tooth so that the actual transfer occurs. The bacteria feed on sucrose and produces acid as a byproduct, thereby degrading the enamel.

In addition, previous work suggests that FabM, or one of the proteins associated with it, could also support all strep and staph infections to help the microorganisms to resist human defenses, which include immune system cells to undergo invading bacteria to an acid attack. Among these bacteria are responsible for meningitis, pneumonia and other severe diseases.

While the FabM represents a favorite target for designing new drugs, the goal to be pursued in the period of study is to identify and classify each of the 2,000 known genes of S. mutans that contribute to the survivability of the bacteria, its ability to prevail over other bacterial strains, and its power to wreak havoc in the mouths of their victims.

A research team from University Medical Center in Rochester has received a grant from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR, by its initials in English), one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to look into this important area of research. Projects of this type seek to create a catalog of proteins that together with the FabM, can serve as targets for a multipronged attack bacteria that tend to adapt to attacks directed against a single target and become resistant against these attacks.

“Our first aim is to force the primary bacterium causing tooth decay to destroy itself with its own acid as soon as sugar coma,” says Robert G. Quivey, Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the Medical Center of the University of Rochester, one of the principal investigators of the study. “After this, this line of work could lead to new antibacterial combination therapies for many infectious strains have become resistant to antibiotics.

Streptococcus Mutans is believed to be responsible for initiating the process of decay. There are periods of colonization called “window of infective” and are between 7 and 29 months and another between 7 and 12. Colonization of Mutans St. depends on the child and the donor has teeth: It is proven that it is usually the child’s mother is the one that is closer and if she has multiple foci, poor hygiene, is more likely the spread .
Since colonization by Mutans St. along the child’s life there are other risk factors for infection of tooth decay:
1) diet: excessive consumption of sugars
2) quality of oral hygiene
3) socio-economic conditions of the family environment