STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The Food and Drug Administration is starting to pull prescription fluoride supplements for kids off the market. That goes against advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and also from the American Academy of Pediatrics. When the FDA announced this move, one of the main reasons it gave was that fluoride changes the microbiome in our guts. The research on that claim turns out to be limited, and so far, it shows that fluoride exposure, if anything, may be helpful. NPR's Pien Huang reports.
PIEN HUANG, BYLINE: On a recent Tuesday, Caroline Orr, a microbiologist at Teesside University in the U.K., was sitting in the local football stadium - the British kind. She was cheering on her team, Sunderland, as they scored a goal that got them into the playoffs.
CAROLINE ORR: My phone was going crazy, and I assumed that it was my friends and family, who are also Sunderland supporters.
HUANG: But it was mostly work emails coming through because Orr's research on fluoride and the microbiome had been cited in an FDA press release about removing prescription supplements for kids from the U.S. market.
ORR: I'm always going to be pleasantly surprised when our research kind of leaves the lab and does something. You know, I guess that's what you hope is going to happen.
HUANG: However, what her research actually shows is that...
ORR: Really small levels of fluoride might have a positive impact on some of the probiotics that are within the microbiome.
HUANG: In other words, low levels of fluoride might actually be good for the microbiome. Orr's paper was published in the journal Nutrition Reviews in March. It analyzed the currently available research on fluoride and the microbiome, and she says there's not much. But what's out there indicates that the dose matters.
ORR: I would be concerned if it meant that people just saw this as fluoride is bad and stopped using fluoride in a way that dentists and doctors know is beneficial.
HUANG: In a press release, the FDA suggested fluoride supplements are dangerous to children, even though there's no clear evidence of harms at the low recommended levels. Fluoride drops or tablets are prescription-only products given to children who aren't getting fluoride in their drinking water and may be at higher risk of cavities. Dr. Paul Casamassimo is chief policy officer for the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry.
PAUL CASAMASSIMO: This bans treatment that is in the best interest of the patient as determined by a trained, licensed health professional.
HUANG: The FDA says it's conducting a safety review and intends to take action to remove these products from the market over the next five months.
CASAMASSIMO: I would make the analogy, is if we had a disease and there was a medicine available to stop it and we were not allowed to prescribe it, I think people would be upset about that.
HUANG: Casamassimo says it's a particular problem in states like Utah and Florida, which have recently banned water fluoridation and are now losing yet another tool to help prevent tooth decay.
Pien Huang, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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