Is it really just making your tooth a cathode?
December 27, 2015 1:28 PM   Subscribe

Does anyone know how Reminova's Electrically Accelerated and Enhanced Remineralisation works, in the details? Is there a patent application somewhere I could read? Is there a forum somewhere where people are trying to recreate it, or talking about how it works in a lot more detail than the news articles? Basically, I want to know how it works. :)
posted by freyley to Technology (4 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
I'm not sure it does work. If you search scholar.google.com for their exact phrase "Electrically Assisted Enhanced Remineralization" you get no results. Searching for just the words in their phrase gives you a series of papers, some of which may be slightly relevant. About the most relevant paper I could find in a quick search is Dielectrophoretic drug transport into teeth which claims dielectrophoresis increases uptake of fluoride onto enamel versus a fluoride rinse. I would consider one article from 1982 to be pretty weak evidence, if in fact that is how they are basing their claim.

The entire tone of Reminova's website matches some of the more "woo" websites in medical fields, claiming significant advancements without offering proof. I would always suspect a new treatment with no data behind it.
posted by blob at 3:49 PM on December 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


The patent is available here (in case that link didn't work, search Google Patents for remineralise tooth electrical and it should be the first hit. That being said, I am very skeptical based on the science and also on the number of punctuation mistakes on their website.
posted by karbonokapi at 6:53 PM on December 27, 2015


Response by poster: They've gotten a lot of press over the last 6 months or so, for example:

Reuters
Techly
Voice of America

And like 600 others.

Why on earth would they have gotten a whole bunch of news coverage recently over a patent they filed 6 years ago? That's just weird.
posted by freyley at 9:04 PM on December 27, 2015


Best answer: Why on earth would they have gotten a whole bunch of news coverage recently over a patent they filed 6 years ago?

Looks like they're sending press releases around to promote their crowdfunding effort.

The technical term for what their device does appears to be "Iontophoresis", according to this Guardian article. A Google search for "iontophoresis teeth" indicates that there's been plenty of apparently legitimate research done on treating teeth in this way. The special thing about Reminova's invention seems to be the way that it automates the process or regulates it or something like that.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 2:35 AM on December 28, 2015


« Older What's the bright side of being single and...   |   Ouch, ouch, ouch Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.