Purpose: Teeth caries is one of predominant civilization diseases. Dental fillings with antimicrobial addition might allow prevention of secondary caries. The purpose of this study was to evaluate hardness and tensile strength of cetylpyridinium chloride modified water activated glass-ionomer cement.
Methods: Samples with diameter of 6 mm and height of 3 mm made of water-activated glass-ionomer cement were control group (0.0%). Test groups were series of samples of the same dimensions, with addition of cetylpyridinium chloride antimicrobial in concentrations of 0.5, 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0%. Two subgroups were prepared in each group to determine Vickers Hardness and Diametral Tensile Strength after 1 and 24 hours of sample storage in distilled water.
Results: During hardness studies, no strong effect of antimicrobial concentration on hardness of samples was observed. Higher hardness values after 24 hours were demonstrated for all groups, compared to the samples tested after 1 hour. The exception was the group with the addition of 1% cetylpyridinium chloride, in which no statistically significant differences were observed. Diametral Tensile Strength values for samples tested after 1 hour decreased with increasing antibacterial concentration. A similar relationship was noticed for samples tested after 24 hours. No statistically signifi- cant differences were found between test samples after 1 or 24 hours.
Conclusions: There was no significant effect of cetylpyridinium chloride concentration on the hardness of the samples that significantly increased during the study. With the increase in antimicrobial concentration a decrease in diametral tensile strength value was observed, but these values did not change over time.