Effect of inhalers on teeth

Does the powder from the inhalers (both) have any effect on your teeth?

Occupational Asthma, Worker, 2/20/2006, 2/20/2006,

This is a difficult question; the reply has been helped by Sophia Marsh, an information scientist. Some dry powder inhalers have the neat drug (eg most turbohalers) and some contain lactose. The average diet contains 48 gms sucrose per day, the average dry powder inhaler contains 0.0125-0.025 gms lactose per dose) Dental caries is made worse by eating sweet things, the main problem is with sucrose, lactose is much less bad. Dry powder aerosols are more acid than pressurised aerosols, and acid can effect tooth enamel. They are not however thought to get acid enough to effect the enamel (it needs to get below pH 5.5, most dry powder inhalers go down to about 6.0) (Tootla R. Archives of Oral Biology 2004;49:275-283). There is evidence for increasing caries in asthmatic children over time, but also no increase in asthmatics compared with other children. From all this it seems that any worries are theoretical rather than practical. If you are really worried in would theoretically be better to take the treatment via a pressurised inhaler and a large spacer.

2/20/2006