Effect of silver diamine fluoride upon the microbial community of carious lesions: A scoping review

To explore the effects of silver diamine fluoride (SDF) on the microbial community of carious lesions. Original studies evaluating the effect of SDF treatment on the microbial community of human carious lesions were included. A systematic search of English-language publications was performed in PubMed, EMBASE, Scopus, and Web of Science. Gray literature was searched in ClinicalTrials.gov and Google Scholar. This review included seven publications reporting the effects of SDF on microbial community of dental plaque or carious dentin, including the microbial biodiversity, relative abundance of microbial taxa, and predicted functional pathways of the microbial community. The studies on microbial community of dental plaque reported that SDF did not have a significant effect on both the within-community species diversity (alpha-diversity) and inter-community microbial compositional dissimilarity (beta-diversity) of the plaque microbial communities. However, SDF changed the relative abundance of 29 bacterial species of plaque community, inhibited carbohydrate transportation and interfered with the metabolic functions of the plaque microbial community. A study on the microbial community in dentin carious lesions reported that SDF affected its beta-diversity and changed the relative abundance of 14 bacterial species. SDF showed no significant effects on the biodiversity of the plaque microbial community but changed the beta-diversity of the carious dentin microbial community. SDF could change the relative abundance of certain bacterial species in the dental plaque and the carious dentin. SDF could also affect the predicted functional pathways of the microbial community. This review provided comprehensive evidence on the potential effect of SDF treatment on the microbial community of carious lesions.