Current and novel approaches for control of dental biofilm

Insights in oral demographics have revealed that a significant percentage of population faces chronic incidences of oral diseases. The innervation of these oral manifestations is required because untreated conditions may lead to bone loss in the oral cavity and systemic complications. Conventional treatments include surgery of the affected area followed by its management and/or treatment with antibiotics. However, widely used antibiotics like Triclosan have serious side effects including down-regulation of oral keratinocytes and fibroblasts. Thus, novel treatments with more targeted approaches have been under investigation. Treatment modalities like Viral mediated gene delivery, liposomes, nanoparticles, and nanobubbles not only help in management of oral diseases but also aid in reducing the biofilm formed due to bacterial bioburden in the areas less accessible through oral and conventional means. This review focuses on the limitation of conventional treatments and highlights the recent investigations in the use of the novel treatment approaches in order to increase the patient compliance and alleviation of side effects. The authors have also tried to emphasize on the future perspectives of glucansucrase inhibitors, photodynamic therapy and probiotics as targeted drug delivery systems. However, further investigations are necessary for implementation of these novel approaches in the clinical setup.