Antibacterial glass-ionomer cement restorative materials: A critical review on the current status of extended release formulations

Glass-ionomer cements (GICs) have been widely used for over forty years, because of their desirable properties in dentistry. The most important advantages of the GICs are associated with their ability to release long-term antimicrobial agents. However, GICs used as restorative materials have still lots of challenges due to their secondary caries and low mechanical properties. Recent studies showed that the fluoride-releasing activity of conventional GICs is inadequate for effectual antibacterial conservation in many cases. Therefore, many efforts have been proposed to modify the antibacterial features of GICs in order to prevent the secondary caries. Particularly, for achieving this goal GICs were incorporated into various biomaterials possessing antibacterial activities. The scope of this review is to assess systematically the extant researches addressing the antibacterial modifications in GICs in order to provide with an authoritative, at the same time in-depth understanding of controlled antibacterial release in this class of biomaterials. It also gives a whole perspective on the future developments of GICs and challenges related to antibacterial GICs.