Immunization strategies in dental caries: Scopes and limitations

Dental caries is an infectious disease, multifactorial, and considered a global public health problem. Of the cariogenic microbiota, Streptococcus mutans concentrated for years as the main etiological agent of dental caries; leading the scientific community to consider it a target of immunization strategies. However, recent studies discovered a polymicrobial ecosystem with wide variability in dental caries, and S. mutans would represent only a small part of the bacterial community, being found in less than 1% in the different types of carious lesions. Several studies have been carried out that seek to control both the appearance and the advance of cavities, for which, vaccines have been developed in two ways: passive immunization and active immunization. Both types of immunization target antigens expressed on the cell surface of the microorganism. In this study, research on the subject published in the last twenty years is reviewed, in order to establish the current state of this field, and expose its scope and limitations when it comes to meeting the objective of reducing the incidence of caries, which, according to world load studies is still high.