If you’ve ever had to deal with the pain of losing a tooth as an adult, you’ll know just how uncomfortable and destructive to your self confidence that new gap can be.

That’s why so many people who’ve suffered tooth loss choose dental implants, for both the aesthetic and functional relief that the artificial tooth can bring.

However, dental implants can be uncomfortable and even cause nerve damage for several reasons – most importantly the fact that a titanium post is being fused to your jawbone, with nerves being damaged in the process.

There has to be a better way, right? Well thankfully, after the hard work from researchers at Tufts University School of Dental Medicine and Tufts University School of Medicine, we might be closer to a more sensitive and less damaging style of dental implant than ever before.

The new style of dental implants, which have up to this point only been tested on rats, involve a bioengineered wrapping around the titanium pole to create a biological rather than forced connection between the implant and the body, improving the connectivity between the artificial tooth and the jaw and nerves.

Recently explained in a paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, the new ‘gentler’ dental implants could pave the way to more effective and less invasive tooth surgery.

Created from stem cells and proteins, the coating gradually dissolves to encourage the growth of nerve tissue around the titanium ‘root’ of the artificial tooth.

At the same time, particles around the pole are gradually expanding so that they fill the socket of the missing tooth, rather than a snugly-fitting implant being forced into the socket, thus protecting delicate nerve endings in the socket and gums.

According to a statement from Tufts’ Professor Jake Jinkun Chen, the new implants allow for a more natural feeling tooth, as well as protecting the nerves and bones:

“Natural teeth connect to the jawbone through soft tissue rich in nerves, which help sense pressure and texture and guide how we chew and speak. Implants lack that sensory feedback. This new implant and minimally invasive technique should help reconnect nerves, allowing the implant to ‘talk’ to the brain much like a real tooth,” explains Chen. “This breakthrough also could transform other types of bone implants, like those used in hip replacements or fracture repair.”

Thus far, the implants are proving highly successful in rats, with no rejection or inflammation. Even more encouragingly, the researchers’ scans of the rats prove that rather than fusing directly to the jawbone, the implants had fused with the soft tissues of the gums and sockets, suggesting that nerve connectivity could have been restored.

As their project continues, the research team will study the nerves of the rats to determine whether nerves have been damaged or re-connected by the new implants, before – later down the line – these futuristic artificial teeth could be rolled out to human testing.

If successful, dental implants could feel much more ‘real’ in the future.

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