A Two-Year Clinical Trial of Sorbitol Chewing Gum

A clinical trial of sorbitol chewing gum was carried out in 540 children aged 7–11 years in a nonfluoride area. Subjects were assigned at random to one of two groups, a no chewing group and one which chewed gum twice daily. Mean caries increments over the 2-year study period were 4.6 new DF surfaces (SD = 4.8) for the sorbitol gum group and 4.7 new DF surfaces (SD = 5.8) for the no gum group. Differences between groups were nonsignificant. As daily chewing of as much as 2 sticks of gum is unusually high, these findings demonstrate that sorbitol gum is noncariogenic.