Polyphenols in infectious dental diseases: therapeutic applications and emerging material-based strategies

Infectious dental diseases, including dental caries, pulpitis, apical periodontitis, and periodontitis, represent a major global health burden and are characterized by complex interactions among pathogenic microorganisms, host immune responses, and tissue destruction. Although conventional treatments can reduce microbial load, their long-term efficacy is often limited by recurrent infection, antimicrobial resistance, dysregulated inflammation, and insufficient tissue regeneration, underscoring the urgent need for alternative strategies. To address this limitatiopns, polyphenols, a diverse class of dietary bioactive compounds with phenolic structures, have gained increasing attention due to their antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and regenerative properties. Beyond their intrinsic bioactivities, recent advances in biomaterials have enabled polyphenols to be incorporated into delivery systems or utilized as functional building blocks for hydrogels, self-assembled nanoplatforms, metal-phenolic networks, and multifunctional coatings, thereby improving their stability, bioavailability, and therapeutic performance. This review summarizes recent advances in the application of polyphenols for infectious dental diseases and highlights their emerging roles as direct bioactive agents, encapsulated therapeutics, and functional biomaterial building blocks. Collectively, these multifunctional strategies underscore the considerable potential of polyphenols for developing next-generation therapies for infectious dental diseases.