The tooth as a monitor of cholestatic liver disease in rats.

Objective: Measure, noninvasively, the deposition of bilirubin in the tooth by using DIAGNOdent and correlate it to liver dysfunction.

Study Design: After confirming the capacity of DIAGNOdent to measure varying bile concentrations in plaster blocks, a cholestatic liver disease model was studied to detect increasing bilirubin impregnation in the teeth of rats. Wistar-EPM rats (n = 50) were divided into three groups: (1) BDL: rats submitted to bile duct ligation (BDL); (2) Naïve: rats without procedure; and (3) Sham: rats submitted to laparotomy without BDL (n = 10/period/group).