![]() In its mildest form, fluorosis appears as faint while lines or streaks on the enamel. It's important to consider all this with us before your kids take a fluoride tablet daily so we can determine the proper dose.įluorosis affects primary and secondary dentition's with a broad range of clinical findings. Also, consider sources of fluoride like daycare water supplies and school water. For instance, if your child is a toothpaste swallower, perhaps you don't need to give him-her the fluoride tablets until they grow out of that habit. This is not common anymore because most communities, parents and dentists monitor all the sources of fluoride that small children get. Then when she smiled I was mortified by the changes in the color of her teeth and the whole picture came into sharp focus: of course, when I asked, she said she had been taking Minocycline for about a year.įluorosis is characterized by brown or white staining due to over-exposure to fluoride during the early enamel formation. I hadn't seen her for a number of years and the first thing that struck me when we first saw each other was her "blue-ish" sclera (the white part of the eyes). That's how I first put 2 and 2 together with my young patient who had Minocycline staining. And now the once perfect crown looked like a headlight, because it was still the original (very white) color of her teeth 4 years ago!Īn interesting finding with Minocycline staining is that sometimes the whites of the patients eye are also stained. ![]() I hadn't seen her for 3 years, then she walked in the office and I almost came unglued: her natural teeth had the most unusual blue/green/gray hue. It was a VERY difficult task but eventually we matched the other teeth perfectly and then she went off to college. Minocycline is being replaced by medications such as Clindamycine and Isotretinoin that do not cause tooth discoloration, but just recently I saw a patient of mine who had a terrible situation caused by Minocycline use. She had a sports accident in high school and needed a crown on her front tooth. Unlike with other tetracycline, staining occurs during and after the complete formation of eruption of teeth. Minocycline can lead to a green-gray or blue-gray intrinsic (inside the tooth) staining of teeth. In any case, Minocycline is a second-generation derivative of tetracycline. But perhaps, medical professionals have not linked Minocycline to the old problems of tetracycline and tooth discoloration. Once in the bloodstream, tetracycline can be incorporated in the calcification process of developing teeth. Since the 1950s, we have known that drugs from the tetracycline family have been associated with internal tooth discoloration. There is a "new" drug on the market, called Minocycline, that is commonly given to college-age young people and older adults to control long-term acne.
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