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Salivary Proteins and the Development of Dental Plaque

The trend in prophylaxis against infectious disease has been toward the application of a biologic leverage, such as immunization, to weigh the balance in favor of the host. Dental caries is an infectious disease and has its inception in a milieu that is exposed to and continuously interacting with saliva. Saliva carries specific and nonspecific humoral components, some or all of which may influence the colonization and cariogenicity of bacteria. Only the specific antibodies may be amenable to prophylactic engineering. If we succeed in learning how to stimulate the production of specific secretory antibodies in saliva, will our conception of their protective function be theoretically well founded? Tracing the distribution of protective proteins on oral surfaces may be one approach to answering this question. Brandtzaeg, Fjellanger, and Gjeruldsen' have reported that bacteria in saliva and plaque occur coated with IgA, albumin, and amylase. We looked for immunoglobulins and other proteins that adhere to the tooth surface to form the acquired pellicle, and we compared the frequency with which these proteins occur in this prebacterial stage and in the developed dental plaque. Proteins in pellicle and plaque were identified on the basis of their antigenic determinants. The pellicles were grown on bovine enamel slabs held in the mouths of human volunteers for two hours, then transferred to microscope slides and examined by the direct fluorescent antibody technique.2 Supragingival plaques, collected from a variety of dental patients, were pooled and lyophilized. After extraction with various buffers, the plaque residues were examined with fluorochrome-labeled antiserums; the extracts were subjected to immunoprecipitin