Dr Óscar Castro Reino, chairman of the General Council of Dentists in Spain, responded to a study recently published in the USA: “It has been shown that the cavity in your first teeth contain blood vessels, nerves and also stem cells which could be used to regenerate damaged tissue.”
These stem cells are preserved in the teeth via the umbilical cord, and can be used in regenerative therapy for diabetes, cancer and heart attacks.
And they are well-conserved because they have not been exposed to the same environmental damage as adult teeth, given that they fall out at between the ages of five and eight.
Dr Castro says keeping them – rather than letting the tooth fairy have them – is ‘an investment in your future’.
‘Tooth banks’ are already operating worldwide, especially in the USA, run by companies who keep milk teeth preserved until they are needed.
They need to be kept in optimum conditions – ideally frozen, in the same way as a woman’s eggs or a man’s sperm are frozen so they can have children later in life.
Generally, only specialist medical companies are able to provide the right conditions so that the teeth can be used in ’20, 30 or 40 years for therapeutic means’, Dr Castro says.
At present, of course, keeping milk teeth in a condition that would allow them to be used for treating serious illnesses – since retaining them in a jar at home does not keep them preserved properly – comes at a fee, but Dr Castro says if studies in this area progress and show that storing milk teeth is indeed a crucial medical exercise, ‘the State would need to get involved’ to ensure ‘this treatment became universal and available to everyone’.
“Otherwise, we would end up with a social class divide: only the wealthy being able to afford treatment,” Dr Castro argues.
The first milk-teeth bank in Spain, Dencells Biomedical Institute, charges nearly €2,500 to collect, analyse the viability of, and preserve teeth for up to 25 years, with an additional fee to keep them ‘on ice’ for longer.
“In the case of patients with a family history of genetic-related illnesses, it would make sense to make this investment in their future; although it’s difficult not to be overly pragmatic: thinking 30 or so years ahead is not easy,” Dr Castro concludes.
Interestingly, children in Spain do not leave their teeth under the pillow for the tooth fairy, but for a ‘tooth mouse’: they are collected by El Ratoncito Pérez (‘Pérez the Little Mouse’).