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Background and objective: A requisite to adopt the remineralization systems as a part of the noninvasive treatment of
the early carious lesion has become a must and has recently gained increasing attention. Studies on remineralization
aimed to create a novel preventive agent that can be used with fluoride or separately from it. Thus, theobromine was a
substance that had been suggested to have anti-cariogenic properties. Therefore, this study was conducted to evaluate the preventive theobromine potential against acid demineralization in comparison to sodium fluoride.
Materials Methods: For this in vitro study, 34 freshly extracted intact upper first premolars were collected, the teeth
were randomly divided into three groups (n=11): (1), the theobromine with artificial saliva group. (2), the sodium fluoride with artificial saliva group, (3), artificial saliva group (as a negative control). One tooth was left sound to be studied under the scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The treatment solutions were applied within a pH-cycling model, then, all the samples were subjected to an acid challenge. Vickers microhardness, EDX and scanning electron microscope were performed to assess enamel structure quantitatively and qualitatively and the data were statistically analyzed.
Results: In the present study, in treatment stage and demineralization stage theobromine-treated teeth had a higher mean of microhardness than the fluoride-treated teeth, with a statistically significant difference (p < 0.05).
Conclusions: The theobromine solution had a higher preventive capacity than that found in other groups. Therefore,
theobromine was an efficient remineralizing material and thus it could be a good substitute for sodium fluoride.