Thank you for the thorough comment concerning our manuscript entitled “Effect of using self-etching primer for bonding orthodontic brackets” in The Angle Orthodontist; 72:558–564;2002. I will do my best to answer to your comment and questions.

In this paper, we investigated the effectiveness of Megabond self-etching primer instead of phosphoric acid, for bonding orthodontic brackets to enamel, when used with composite resin adhesive and with resin-modified glass ionomer cement. We applied Megabond self-etching primer directly on the enamel without any etching treatment. When it is used with resin-modified glass ionomer cement, Megabond self-etching primer gave no significantly different shear bond strength, compared with that of the polyacrylic acid etching. But when it is used with composite resin adhesive, Megabond self-etching primer gave significantly lower shear bond strength than that of the phosphoric acid etching.

In papers by Newman et al. (Angle Orthod 2001;71:312–317, Am J Orthod Dentofacial Orthop. 2001;119:256–262), the effectiveness of Megabond was also investigated. However, they applied Megabond to enamel after etching. This application method was totally different from ours. For example, we intended to reduce the clinical steps for bonding orthodontic brackets to enamel. We decided to use self-etching primer instead of phosphoric acid or polyacrylic acid etching. That is the reason we did not include the above articles by Newman et al in our paper.

Regarding the “Affirm,” we are not able to obtain Affirm nor have any information about Affirm in Japan. So we cannot talk about anything regarding Affirm.

Currently, we are still investigating the effectiveness of Megabond self-etching primer for bonding orthodontic brackets to enamel. If we can obtain interesting results, we will mention something about Megabond with reference to the data by Newman et al.