RESUMO
This study aimed to evaluate the ability of chewing gum containing sodium metaphosphate (SMP) to remove coffee stains from enamel in situ. This was a double-blind (subjects, evaluators), parallel-group, crossover, randomized clinical trial with 30 healthy adult volunteers. Each participant held an appliance with a hydroxyapatite (HA) pellet on the lower lingual side of his or her mouth for two hours to allow pellicle formation. The appliances were subsequently immersed in coffee solution at 37°C for 48 hours. The color of the HA pellet before and after coffee immersion was measured using a spectrophotometer. The participant set the appliance and chewed two pieces of test gum, which contained 7.5 mg of SMP per piece, or control gum without SMP. Each cycle included five minutes of exposure to chewing gum, after which the appliances were placed in 100% relative humidity at room temperature for a 30-minute incubation. This cycle was repeated five times for each gum type. The color of the HA pellet was measured after each chewing cycle using the spectrophotometer. In addition, ΔE* values, which indicate the change in pellet color after each chewing cycle compared with after coffee immersion, were calculated. Data were analyzed using the paired t-test with Bonferroni adjustment to compare ΔE* values of control and test gum after each chewing cycle. The ΔE* values of test gum were significantly higher than those of control gum after all chewing cycles, excluding the first cycle (p<0.05). This finding indicates that test gum containing SMP was more effective at removing coffee stains from the HA pellet than control gum. We conclude that chewing gum containing SMP can effectively remove coffee stains from HA pellets. Thus, SMP is a promising agent to be further explored in tooth-cleaning studies.
