Hacker News Reader

Interesting work!

Are there any treatments that kill the pathogenic but leave the beneficial microbes?

Does mouthwash kill them equally? What about h2o2 or xylitol?

A majority of the products marketed today non-specifically ablate the microbiome. While they are effective at reducing the microbial titer as a whole, they are ineffective at specifically targeting pathogenic microbes associated with disease.

I'd just add that we're hoping to develop products that specifically reduce/eliminate oral pathogens while encouraging growth of probiotic species

That sounds great. Does xylitol do that to an extent?

It seems that more research is needed to confirm, but there are some studies and use cases where Xylitol seems to prevent tooth decay. This study has a great review[1] under "Xylitol and other polyols": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5830181/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com