www.ijbcp.com International Journal of Basic & Clinical Pharmacology | September 2018 | Vol 7 | Issue 9 Page 1667 IJBCP International Journal of Basic & Clinical Pharmacology Print ISSN: 2319-2003 | Online ISSN: 2279-0780 Review Article Sugar substitutes and dental health Rohan Sachdev* INTRODUCTION The etymology of the word "sugar" has been traced to the Chinese term shache, literally, "sand-sugar plant", then to the Sanskrit, sharkera, meaning sand or gravel, and more directly from the Arabic, sukkar. 1 Search for suitable sweetening agent which will satisfy all the characteristics of sugar is going on through years, since then there is no such substitute which will replace sugar in all aspects, but, cariogenic potential can certainly be reduced by using sugar substitutes. Recently, few sugar substitutes are even considered to have antimicrobial property against caries producing microbes in oral cavity. 2 Sucrose (table sugar) is considered as sugar by most of the people. The term sugars include all the monosaccharides and disaccharides, the most common of which are glucose, fructose, sucrose, maltose and lactose. Sucrose is an unusually versatile sweetener, useful in many different types of products, so difficulties in the substitution of sucrose arise as sweeteners differ from each other both in their physical and chemical properties. Replacement of sucrose by other sweeteners is not at all simple because they differ from each other both in their physical and chemical properties. As single sweetener is not able to fulfil all the roles of sucrose in the different products, sweetener that can best imitate the role of sucrose in the product in question should be added. 1 ABSTRACT Sugar is one of the most widely consumed sweetening agents. Unfortunately, its use has been linked to various disease states, such as obesity, diabetes mellitus (DM) and dental caries. Dental caries is a chronic disease which can affect us at any age. The role of sugar (and other fermentable carbohydrates such as highly refined flour) as a risk factor in the initiation and progression of dental caries is increasing day by day. Sugar substitutes are food additives that provide a sweet taste more or less similar to that of sugar and plays important role in control of dental caries. Keywords: Dentistry, Health, Sugar, Sugar substitute DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2319-2003.ijbcp20183472 Department of Community Dentistry, Rama Dental College, Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh Province, India Received: 09 July 2018 Accepted: 04 August 2018 *Correspondence to: Dr. Rohan Sachdev, Email: drrohansachdev@ live.com Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open- access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non- Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non- commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.