Has Sensodyne changed its formula? How to check any toothpaste's ingredients against an older tube.
No public record will tell you whether the tube in your bathroom carries a different formula from the one you bought last year, because the rules that set out what a toothpaste sold in Great Britain must print say nothing about announcing a reformulation1. What you do have is the ingredient list on the pack, the one record the rules require to be there, and reading it line by line against an older tube or an old photograph of one takes about five minutes. S3 Sensitivity Science™ publishes each of its three actives with the basis of its percentage: 5% potassium nitrate, and hydroxyapatite at inclusion levels as supplied, with the active content stated as lower.
What was checkedfour peer-reviewed studies and one clinical letter, product information as published by each brand, UK government and NHS guidance
- The guidance for consumers lists what a cosmetic pack must carry — ingredients, a batch number, a use-by date, and the name and address of a named Responsible Person — and none of it is a notice that the formula has moved1.
- A nanomaterial ingredient has to be followed by "(nano)" in the list, which is why S3's published list reads "Hydroxyapatite (nano)" and why the nano form is one thing you can always spot on a tube2.
- Four of the eight Sensodyne variants whose ingredient lists we recorded on 2026-09-09 declare the level of their desensitising active and four do not, and "not declared" means not published rather than low.
- In the one published double-blind randomised trial comparing a reformulated desensitising toothpaste with the product it replaced, both versions improved and most of the differences between them were not significant5.
- If the two lists match, the difference you are noticing is not one anybody outside the company can document.
Can anyone tell you whether a toothpaste's formula has changed?
Not from outside the company. That is a fact about the whole category, and not about any single maker. The government's guidance for consumers names toothpastes among cosmetic products and sets out what such a product must carry: what it does, any precautions, the weight or volume, the name and address of the Responsible Person, an identification number such as a batch number, the use-by date, the country of origin if it is imported, and a list of ingredients, "though this may be only on the packaging"1. All of it must be in English and easy to read1. Nowhere in that list is there a duty to say that anything has changed.
Inside the company the record exists in detail. The Responsible Person has to know which ingredients are used, keep an up-to-date Product Information File holding the safety report and the evidence for the product's effects, and keep it for ten years after the last batch was made available2. Good manufacturing practice, as the same guidance describes it, asks a maker to record and justify changes to the manufacturing process and to use quality control to find out when a product or a raw material changes unexpectedly2. A reformulation is documented. It is simply not documented to you.
There is one route in, and it is narrower than it sounds. If a member of the public asks, the Responsible Person must provide the list of ingredients; amounts per unit weight have to be provided only for hazardous ingredients such as carcinogens and mutagens, and what is handed over must still protect commercial secrecy and intellectual property2. So you can ask a manufacturer what is in the tube. You cannot generally make them tell you how much.
This page cannot tell you whether your tube changed, and no other page can either, ours included. What it can do is show you where the answer would be visible if it were visible anywhere.
Why is a sensitivity toothpaste a cosmetic and a high-fluoride paste a medicine?
Because the line is drawn by what a product claims and how its ingredients act, not by where it is sold. The MHRA treats cosmetics as one of the categories that can sit on the borderline with medicines, and decides by looking at the claims made for a product, the pharmacological, metabolic or immunological properties of its ingredients, its primary intended purpose and how it is presented to the public3. A paste sold to calm sensitive teeth stays on the cosmetic side of that line. A high-fluoride paste crosses it: Colgate Duraphat 5000ppm fluoride toothpaste appears in the British National Formulary with a dose, an age range and a prescription form, and may be prescribed as sodium fluoride toothpaste 1.1%4.
That is why your question has no public answer. A licensed medicine has a public entry carrying its dose, its indications and the age it may be given at, which is why anyone can look Duraphat up4. A cosmetic notifies the regulator and keeps the rest of its file in a drawer2.
What does the pack have to tell you, and what does it not?
It has to tell you what is in the tube, and it does not have to tell you how much. The ingredient list is required, may sit on the outer packaging rather than the tube itself, and carries one marker that is worth knowing: a nanomaterial ingredient must be followed by "(nano)"2. That single rule makes the nano form of hydroxyapatite visible on any pack that contains it, S3's included.
Levels are a different matter. Of the eight Sensodyne variants recorded in our category review on 2026-09-09, Pronamel Daily Protection declares potassium nitrate 5% w/w, Clinical Repair Active White declares calcium sodium phosphosilicate 5% w/w, and Sensodyne Rapid Relief and Sensitivity & Gum each declare stannous fluoride 0.454% w/w. Repair & Protect, Repair & Protect Whitening, Daily Care Original and Complete Protection+ name their active and publish no figure for it. A blank is a blank: it says the level was not published, and it supports no conclusion about what the level is.
Fluoride is the exception. Every one of those eight rows prints its fluoride salt and 1450 ppm, because fluoride strength is the number the category has always declared. And the base is legible without any figure at all: the potassium nitrate variants list Aqua, the bioactive-glass and stannous ones do not, which is the chemistry rather than a preference, since an anhydrous formula is what a bioactive glass needs and is also what stops it carrying a water-soluble nerve active.
One thing this page will not tell you, because the guidance we can cite does not say it: what the order of the list means. The consumer page sets out what has to appear on a cosmetic pack, not the sequence it appears in1. An earlier version of this page told you that a cosmetic list runs in descending order of amount and that the position of the active was therefore as informative as its name. It has been taken out rather than repeated from memory, and the method below does not need it — you compare the whole list, not the top of it.
How do you compare a new tube against an old one in five minutes?
Photograph the panel on the tube you have now, put it beside the old tube or an old photograph, and go down the list once. Read it as seven questions rather than as a wall of chemistry.
| What to compare | Where it appears on the pack | What a difference would mean | What it would not mean |
|---|---|---|---|
| The desensitising active and its declared level | The ingredient list, and the separate actives line where a brand prints one | A different active is a different mechanism, and the nearest thing to a real reformulation | A level that has vanished from the pack is not a level that has fallen; it may never have been published |
| The fluoride salt and the ppm | The ingredient list and the "contains" or hazards line | A change of salt or of strength, both of which are printed by convention across the category | A change of salt at the same ppm is not less fluoride |
| Whether water appears in the list | Near the top of the ingredient list, as Aqua | A move between a water-based and an anhydrous base, which changes what the paste can carry | Water high in the list is not filler; it is what a water-soluble active needs |
| The abrasive system | Hydrated silica, calcium carbonate, alumina and their neighbours | A change in how gritty the paste feels, and in how it polishes | Grittiness is not the desensitising active, and this comparison cannot tell you the abrasivity figure |
| Flavour, sweetener and foaming agent | Aroma, limonene, saccharin, the surfactant | A change in taste, foam and mouthfeel, which is what most people notice first | None of these three is a desensitising active |
| Pack size, batch number and the period-after-opening mark | The crimp, the base of the tube and the open-jar symbol | A new batch, a new run, or a new pack format | A new batch is not a new formula |
| The Responsible Person's name and address | The back of the carton or the tube | A change of who is legally answerable for the product, often a change of manufacturer or of corporate owner | A new address is not evidence that anything inside the tube moved |
Identical lists mean no change that anyone was obliged to publish. Same actives with a different supporting cast means a change you can see but cannot size. A different active means two different products with one name on the front.
What can you check on an S3 tube, and on any other?
The same seven questions, on three real lists. This page compares ingredients and stated actions only, not clinical performance, based on what each brand states about its own formula. Prices and formulations may change; always check the pack. Each row below carries its record from our category review and the date it was read.
| Product, as read on 2026-09-09 | Named active, as published | Level declared? | Fluoride salt and ppm | Water in the list? | Record |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sensodyne Daily Care Original | Potassium nitrate | No | Sodium fluoride, 1450 ppm | Yes | CR-006 |
| Sensodyne Pronamel Daily Protection | Potassium nitrate | Yes, 5% w/w | Sodium fluoride, 1450 ppm | Yes | CR-004 |
| S3 Daily Sensitive Toothpaste | Potassium nitrate; hydroxyapatite; hydroxyapatite (nano) | Yes, and with the basis of each figure stated | Sodium monofluorophosphate, 1450 ppm | Yes | CR-028 |
Two of those rows share an active and differ on whether the level is printed. The third names three actives, and states that the hydroxyapatite figures are inclusion levels of the ingredient as supplied with a lower active content, which is the kind of qualifier a percentage needs if it is going to mean anything.
Read the honest limit of that table with it. Every row is a page read on a single day: a record of what a retailer or a maker published then, not a promise about the tube in your hand today. The full scan behind it, with every product, every source and the date each was read, is published as our category review of UK sensitivity toothpastes by declared ingredient, and the market leader's whole range is decoded variant by variant on the sibling page G069, the Sensodyne range decoded. Both carry the same scan date, and both start ageing the moment a manufacturer changes something. That is the point of the method: your pack outranks any page written about it, ours as much as anyone else's.
If the list did change, does it matter?
Sometimes, and less often than the question assumes. Just one published trial has compared a reformulated desensitising toothpaste with the product it replaced5. It took an established potassium citrate paste, added triclosan and zinc citrate to it, and ran the two against each other double-blind for eight weeks in 56 adults who completed: both improved from baseline at day 14 and day 56, most of the differences between them were not significant, and the added anti-plaque agents did not reduce the desensitising activity5. That is one trial, one product, one kind of change, and it says nothing about a change of active. It is still the only direct evidence anybody has published, and it points the other way from the intuition that a reformulation must be why a paste stopped helping.
Where a change does matter is the active itself, because the actives are not interchangeable. A 2026 systematic review and network meta-analysis of 93 randomised trials in 9,548 participants compared the classes against a benchmark fluoride toothpaste at two weeks6. Stannous fluoride was the one node it rated high confidence; nano-hydroxyapatite showed a large reduction from two studies at moderate confidence, and potassium toothpastes a small but important effect at low confidence, from a single contributing study6. Its authors conclude that stannous fluoride and arginine toothpastes should be considered first-line self-care, and the same review records that most of the trials it pooled were industry funded6. Stannous fluoride is not on our ingredient list, and this page is not going to pretend otherwise. If your old tube had one active and your new tube has another, you have changed mechanism, and that is worth eight weeks of attention.
Where a change usually does not matter for sensitivity is everything you notice first. How gritty a paste feels is set by the particles in it: a laboratory study by scientists whose companion paper declares them employees of the Colgate-Palmolive Company predicted panel ratings of particle presence from the paste's yield stress, flow index and surface friction alone, with no active involved7. How much it foams, and how much people like the foam, was predicted the same way across fifteen custom formulations varying in surfactant, abrasive and sensate, in a study whose authors are all employed by the same manufacturer8. Taste, texture and foam are real, they are the first thing anyone reports, and they are properties of the base.
They are not always nothing, either. A 2026 letter to the editor in Clinical Oral Investigations, a clinical observation rather than a trial, describes oral lesions associated with a reformulated toothpaste and treats it as a diagnostic pitfall9. If a new tube leaves your mouth sore, not merely different, that is a reason to stop and to ask a dentist, whatever the actives row of your comparison says.
What should you switch to, if the active has changed?
Choose by mechanism, not by the front of the box. A sensitive tooth has two things wrong with it at once, and hydroxyapatite occludes while potassium desensitises, so neither ingredient does the other's job and a tube built for sensitivity carries both. If your old paste worked on the nerve and the new one works on the tubule, or the reverse, you have not lost a product so much as swapped a mechanism, and the sensible next step is to pick the one you have not had. The shelf-level version of that decision lives on two sibling pages, not on this one. G064 lists the UK alternatives by active ingredient; G068 sets out how long to give a new tube before judging it; and G062 works through what to try when the market leader stops helping, including how to run a fair eight-week test of whatever you buy next. The Journal's guide to how sensitive toothpastes work and why yours might not be working covers the same ground for a reader who wants the mechanisms first.
When is it not the formula at all?
Whenever the two lists come out the same, and then the question moves from the tube to the routine, the tooth, or the limit of one mechanism. A reformulation is one of four explanations, and the sibling page on why a sensitivity toothpaste stops working sets out all of them at length: the response to being treated wearing off, one mechanism reaching its ceiling, a mouth that has changed while the tube stayed the same, and the formula moving. Nobody has counted how often each of them is the answer, so this page will not rank them. It only needs you to know they exist before you blame the tube.
There is also a threshold at which none of this is a toothpaste question. The NHS asks you to see a dentist for toothache lasting more than two days, for pain that painkillers do not settle, and for pain that arrives with a high temperature, red gums, a bad taste or pain when you bite, and to treat a swollen cheek or jaw as urgent10. A changed ingredient list does not swell a jaw. If what you are feeling is new, sharp and in one tooth, the comparison above can wait.
Frequently asked questions
Do brands have to announce a reformulation?
No. The consumer guidance requires a cosmetic product to carry an accurate list of ingredients, a batch number, a use-by date and a named Responsible Person, and requires all of it to be in English and easy to read; a notice of change is not on the list1. Some makers put a flash on the carton when they change something. Many do not, and the comparison works either way.
My tube says "new look" — has the formula changed?
A new carton is a new carton. What the rules do say is that the labelling and advertising of a cosmetic product must not imply characteristics or functions the product does not have, which is a constraint on what the front of the box may claim, not a promise that the back of it has stayed still2. Compare the lists.
What does S3's formulation scientist say about a paste that feels different from the one you remember?
On our own product, she puts it plainly: the manufacturer changed the method of manufacture, and that increased the viscosity of the paste. The flavour is a deliberate piece of engineering too, a mild spearmint and peppermint blend with a twist of clove and cinnamon, chosen because an unflavoured paste lets the bitter, salty, mineral notes of the base come through while brushing. Neither of those is an active ingredient, and both of them change how a tube feels in the mouth.
Has S3 changed its own formula?
Repeatedly, before it went on sale: the formula went through 31 iterations over three years. Any change after that would appear where anyone else's would, in the ingredient list on the pack, and we would be checkable on it in exactly the way this page asks you to check everybody else. That is the honest answer to the question, and it is the reason the page is written as a method rather than as a verdict.
Where can I look up an ingredient name I do not recognise?
The European Commission publishes CosIng, its database of cosmetic ingredients, and it is the place to resolve an unfamiliar INCI name into what the substance is and what it is doing in a formula11. It is worth using before you conclude that an unfamiliar word is a new active. Look at the lists quoted above: most of the words a reader would not recognise are thickeners, humectants, preservatives and flavour components, and the actives are the short part.
Where S3 sits
When the question is hydroxyapatite or stannous fluoride, the real question is tubule or nerve, and S3 was formulated to answer both. Whatever you buy next, the check worth making is whether the maker publishes its actives and the basis of every percentage: S3 states 5% potassium nitrate, and hydroxyapatite at inclusion levels as supplied with the active content lower than the inclusion figure.
S3 Sensitivity Science™ pairs potassium nitrate with two hydroxyapatites and adult-strength fluoride in one daily paste.
See the toothpasteOne daily tube, three actives with their levels published: 5% potassium nitrate for the nerve, nano-hydroxyapatite and biomimetic hydroxyapatite at 10% and 5% as supplied, and full adult-strength fluoride. The three actions are calming the nerve, strengthening the enamel surface and protecting against further wear. S3 Repair Technology™ is patent-pending, under UK application GB2604755.5. Others are dentist recommended; S3 is dentist owned, and more than 20 UK dentists have put their own money into it. Read more about S3.