Natural products and caries prevention

Dental caries is considered as the most common polymicrobial oral disease in the world. With the aim of developing alternative approaches to reduce or prevent the decay, numerous papers showed the potential anticaries activity of a number of natural products. The natural products with anticaries effects are selected from e.g. food, beverages, flowers or traditional herbs. Most of the effective components are proven to be polyphenol compounds. Many of the natural products are studied as antibacterial agents, while some of them are found to be effective in shifting the de-/remineralization balance. However, the mechanisms of the anticaries effects are still unclear for most of the natural products. In the future, more efforts need to be made to seek novel effective natural products via in vitro experiment, animal study and in situ investigations, as well as to enhance their anticaries effects with the help of novel technology like nanotechnology.