Firstly, S. mutans does not colonize the epithelium. It lives almost exclusively on enamel. The total surface area in the mouth that it could realistically inhabit is exceptionally small, unless Lumina can live in places that S. mutans generally does not.
Big crux! Thanks for the investigative effort. Sounds mostly resolvable via assay of existing Lumina customer saliva.
An interesting twist: drinking ethanol doesn’t just cause acute exposure but
“The concentration of ethanol in the oral cavity increases immediately after an alcoholic beverage is consumed and then decreases. It was reported after intake of an alcoholic beverage that the concentration of ethanol remaining in the oral cavity decreases gradually, as ethanol flows back into saliva from the blood for a few hours after it is taken into the body [25,26]. Most previous studies of acetaldehyde production by oral bacteria, including our study [24], used ethanol concentrations as low as 11–22 mM (approximately 0.05–0.1%), which corresponds to the ethanol concentrations seen in saliva a few hours after alcohol consumption [20,22,26,27]. ”
From https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8204988/
Big crux! Thanks for the investigative effort. Sounds mostly resolvable via assay of existing Lumina customer saliva.
An interesting twist: drinking ethanol doesn’t just cause acute exposure but “The concentration of ethanol in the oral cavity increases immediately after an alcoholic beverage is consumed and then decreases. It was reported after intake of an alcoholic beverage that the concentration of ethanol remaining in the oral cavity decreases gradually, as ethanol flows back into saliva from the blood for a few hours after it is taken into the body [25,26]. Most previous studies of acetaldehyde production by oral bacteria, including our study [24], used ethanol concentrations as low as 11–22 mM (approximately 0.05–0.1%), which corresponds to the ethanol concentrations seen in saliva a few hours after alcohol consumption [20,22,26,27]. ” From https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8204988/