PREPARATION, COMPOSITION AND APPLICATION OF A BIOACTIVE FLUORIDE-DOPED CALCIUM PHOSPHATE ABLE TO INDUCED CONTROLLED DEPOSITION OF FLUORAPATITE

Dental caries is a biofilm-mediated, sugar-driven, multifactorial, dynamic disease that results in the phasic demineralization and remineralization of dental hard tissues. Caries can occur throughout life, both in primary and permanent dentitions, and can damage the tooth crown and, in later life, exposed root surfaces. The balance between pathological and protective factors influences the initiation and progression of caries. This interplay between factors underpins the classification of individuals and groups into caries risk categories, allowing an increasingly tailored approach to care. Dental caries is an unevenly distributed, preventable disease with considerable economic and quality-of-life burdens. The daily use of fluoride toothpaste is seen as the main reason for the overall decline of caries worldwide over recent decades. Moreover, fluoride-containing products are also commonly used in oral hygiene and preventive/restorative dentistry. Indeed, fluoride ions may replace the hydroxyl groups present in dental hydroxyapatite, transforming the latter into fluorapatite; this makes dental enamel more resistant to acid attacks (e.g. erosion) and caries (primary and secondary lesions). Fluorapatite is recognized as the toughest biological apatite in the animal world, and also as the material with the highest resistance to dissolution in acidic media (e.g. cariogenic bacteria demineralize the tooth and create the carious lesion via organic acids produced by their metabolisms in the presence of simple and complex sugar). The invention refers to a composition for obtaining a bioactive material, preferably in powder, containing fluoride and a pH regulator. This causes a reaction that, if not manipulated, would result in the formation of brushite. In particular, it is the combination of a first component and a second component that, when reacted, would generate brushite or other types of calcium phosphates, but when the pH of the reaction is maintained under control, the formation of brushite is inhibited, nut instead a precursor of fluoride-doped hydroxyapatite is formed; this latter gradually transform into fluorapatite.