homehome Home chatchat Notifications


Excessive use of dental fixture cream leaves UK man without use of his legs

Always use drugs as per instructions!

Alexandru Micu
August 9, 2017 @ 6:43 pm

share Share

A 62-year-old UK man has lost feeling in both his legs from prolonged heavy use of zinc-containing dental fixture.

Parking sign wheelchair.

Image credits Paul Brennan.

The 62-year-old man first visited a neurology clinic complaining of a tingling sensation and numbness in his hands, and pain and weakness in his legs. This made it difficult for him to move, and the tap-tap-tap of his cane would follow him into the doctor’s office. Six months later, his symptoms had become so severe that he had to use a wheelchair to move about, and had became largely housebound.

This, a recently published paper reports, is the latest among a handful of reported cases in which denture cream use has led to neurological issues.

Too much zinc

MRI scans performed at the clinic showed several abnormalities in the patient’s spinal chord — the man had slight degeneration of six vertebrae in his neck, and he’d also lost more than a dozen pounds. Follow-up tests revealed the cause: copper deficiency myelopathy, a brain syndrome caused by a lack of copper. This element plays an important role in maintaining nerve cells, the health of the immune system, and supports the production of red blood cells. But the man’s affliction was a little strange to say the least, since it’s pretty hard to develop a copper deficiency. Our bodies only need trace amounts of it, way less than your average diet provides.

The man’s blood also contained unusually high levels of zinc, which pointed his doctors at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, led by Dr. Liam Carroll, on-track as to the cause of his ailment: zinc toxicity caused by dental adhesive cream use. Now, zinc is a pretty common thing to find in denture adhesive creams. In fact, it’s actually pretty useful for your body. Zinc is a building block of DNA and supports your immune system in killing off bad guys — but too much of it starts messing with the body’s ability to metabolize copper.

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), if these products are used as per their instructions they won’t lead to a toxic build-up of the element. The man, however, reported that he’d been using two to four tubes of dental fixture every week for 15 years because his ill-fitting dentures kept falling off. Which is far above the 11-milligram daily dose recommended for adult men.

The man was instructed to immediately stop using the cream and was prescribed copper supplements to help treat his condition. The symptoms didn’t progress any further. He reported a gradual reduction in tingling and numbness but remains mostly wheelchair-bound. The doctors say he may have irreversible nerve damage due to the delayed diagnosis.

The paper “Zinc containing dental fixative causing copper deficiency myelopathy” has been published in the journal BMJ Case Reports.

share Share

A Simple Heat Hack Could Revolutionize How We Produce Yogurt

In principle, the method could be deployed tomorrow, researchers say.

Scientists Create a ‘Smart Sponge’ That Knows When to Heal and When to Fight Inflammation

This hydrogel could help millions of people lead a better life.

The Race to the Bottom: Japan Is Set to Start Testing Deep-Sea Mining

There's a big hidden cost to this practice.

Japan Just Smashed the Internet Speed World Record and It's Much Faster Than You Think

Researchers transmitted 127,500 GB every second — over the distance from Chicago to Dallas.

Can You Tell Which Knot Is Strongest? Most People Fail This Surprisingly Tough Challenge

Knots are a test of physical intuition and most of us are failing hard.

Scientists Call for a Global Pause on Creating “Mirror Life” Before It’s Too Late: “The threat we’re talking about is unprecedented”

Creating synthetic lifeforms is almost here, and the consequences could be devastating.

For the First Time Ever We Can See Planets Starting to Form Around a Star

JWST and ALMA peered through a natural opening in the star’s surrounding cloud to catch the action up close.

Low testosterone isn't killing your libido. Sugar is

Small increases in blood sugar can affect sperm and sex, even without diabetes

There might be an anti-aging secret hiding in magic mushrooms

Psilocybin extends cell life, and preserves aging DNA structures.

Not Just Hunters: Wooden Tools Unearth the Sophisticated, Plant-Eating World of Early Humans

What if the Stone Age wasn't really about stone?