Abstract
Considering the central role of inflammation in the pathogenesis of periodontitis, the combination of NSPT with different agents that can modulate the host immune-inflammatory response has ...been proposed to enhance the outcomes of NSPT. The aim of this paper is to systematically review the literature on the efficacy of systemic host modulators (HMs) as adjuncts to non-surgical periodontal therapy (NSPT) in improving pocket depth (PD) reduction and clinical attachment level (CAL) gain in healthy and systemically compromised patients. RCTs with ≥ 3 months follow-up were independently searched by two reviewers. Meta-analysis was performed when ≥ 3 studies on the same HM were identified. The quality of the evidence was rated according to the GRADE approach to rate the certainty of evidence. 38 articles were included in the qualitative assessment and 27 of them were included in the meta-analysis. There is low/very low evidence that the adjunctive use of sub-antimicrobial dose of doxycicline, melatonin and the combination of omega-3 and low dose aspirin (in type 2 diabetic patients) to NSPT would improve PD and/or CAL. Conflicting evidence is available on the efficacy of probiotics. Future studies controlling for confounding factors, using composite outcomes to define the endpoint of therapy and considering not only the patient- but also as the site-specific effect of systemic HMs are warranted. The dosage, posology and long-term effect of HMs still need to be clarified, also in association to the presence of systemic conditions potentially affecting the response to HMs administration.
Aim
This review critically appraises the available knowledge on the pre‐clinical and clinical use of bioactive factors for bone regeneration in the cranial and maxillofacial area.
Materials and ...Methods
The use of growth factors, amelogenins and autologous platelet concentrates (APCs) for bone regeneration was reviewed in a systematic manner. More specifically, pre‐clinical and clinical studies on ridge preservation, alveolar ridge augmentation, regeneration of peri‐implant defects and sinus augmentation models were considered.
Results
Amongst different bioactive factors, the highest pre‐clinical and clinical evidence of a positive effect on bone formation is associated with rhBMP‐2 and the lowest with amelogenins. While APCs seem to accelerate clinical healing and reduce postoperative discomfort, there is insufficient and contrasting evidence of a significant effect on hard tissue regeneration for the different clinical applications.
Conclusions
Although there is increasing evidence that bioactive factors might enhance the bone regeneration process, the great heterogeneity of the available studies and the limited number of RCTs do not allow to draw robust conclusions. Issues that still need to be investigated include the optimal carriers for bioactive agents (direct vs. indirect), the dosage, the timing of administration, as well as the possibility of combining different agents to promote synergistic effects.
Background
Considering the role of the inflammatory host response in the pathogenesis of periodontitis, different host modulators have been proposed to enhance the outcomes of non‐surgical ...periodontal therapy (NSPT), but their efficacy has not been fully clarified.
Objectives
This systematic review investigated the efficacy of host modulators combined with NSPT in reducing probing pocket depth (PPD) in periodontitis patients.
Materials and methods
Placebo‐controlled RCTs with ≥6 months follow‐up were searched. Meta‐analysis was conducted when ≥5 studies using the same host modulator were identified.
Results
Fifty eight studies met the inclusion criteria. After 6 months, local administration of 1.2% statin gels as adjuncts to NSPT significantly improved PPD reduction (1.83 mm) in infrabony defects and systemic administration of sub‐antimicrobial dose doxycycline (SDD) in addition to NSPT improved PPD reduction of deep pockets. Administration of probiotics conferred limited clinical benefits. Local bisphosphonate and metformin gels showed potential for clinical use in infrabony defects, which needs to be confirmed.
Conclusions
Local delivery of statins in infrabony defects and systemic SDD for deep pockets may confer additional clinical benefits to NSPT. Their long‐term effectiveness and safety need to be confirmed in independent multi‐centred studies. Further studies are needed to confirm the benefit of other host modulators.
Background and Aims
To review the regenerative technologies used in bone regeneration: bone grafts, barrier membranes, bioactive factors and cell therapies.
Material and Methods
Four background ...review publications served to elaborate this consensus report.
Results and Conclusions
Biomaterials used as bone grafts must meet specific requirements: biocompatibility, porosity, osteoconductivity, osteoinductivity, surface properties, biodegradability, mechanical properties, angiogenicity, handling and manufacturing processes. Currently used biomaterials have demonstrated advantages and limitations based on the fulfilment of these requirements. Similarly, membranes for guided bone regeneration (GBR) must fulfil specific properties and potential biological mechanisms to improve their clinical applicability. Pre‐clinical and clinical studies have evaluated the added effect of bone morphogenetic proteins (mainly BMP‐2) and autologous platelet concentrates (APCs) when used as bioactive agents to enhance bone regeneration. Three main approaches using cell therapies to enhance bone regeneration have been evaluated: (a) “minimally manipulated” whole tissue fractions; (b) ex vivo expanded “uncommitted” stem/progenitor cells; and (c) ex vivo expanded “committed” bone‐/periosteum‐derived cells. Based on the evidence from clinical trials, transplantation of cells, most commonly whole bone marrow aspirates (BMA) or bone marrow aspirate concentrations (BMAC), in combination with biomaterial scaffolds has demonstrated an additional effect in sinus augmentation and horizontal ridge augmentation, and comparable bone regeneration to autogenous bone in alveolar cleft repair.
Periodontal diseases, including gingivitis and periodontitis, are among the most prevalent diseases in humans. Gingivitis is the mildest form of periodontal disease, characterized by inflammation of ...the gingiva caused by the accumulation of dental plaque. Salivary diagnostics are becoming increasingly popular due to the variation in saliva composition in response to pathological processes. We used a metabolomics approach to investigate whether a specific saliva metabolic composition could indicate preclinical stage of gingivitis.
H-NMR spectroscopy was used to obtain the salivary metabolite profiles of 20 healthy subjects. Univariate/multivariate statistical analysis evaluated the whole saliva metabolite composition, and the Full-Mouth Bleeding Score (FMBS) was employed as a classification parameter. Identifying a signature of specific salivary metabolites could distinguish the subjects with high FMBS scores but still within the normal range. This set of metabolites may be due to the enzymatic activities of oral bacteria and be associated with the early stages of gingival inflammation. Although this analysis is to be considered exploratory, it seems feasible to establish an FMBS threshold that distinguishes between the absence and presence of early inflammatory alterations at the salivary level.
Systematic reviews are cumbersome yet essential to the epistemic process of medical science. Finding significant reports, however, is a daunting task because the sheer volume of published literature ...makes the manual screening of databases time-consuming. The use of Artificial Intelligence could make literature processing faster and more efficient. Sentence transformers are groundbreaking algorithms that can generate rich semantic representations of text documents and allow for semantic queries. In the present report, we compared four freely available sentence transformer pre-trained models (all-MiniLM-L6-v2, all-MiniLM-L12-v2, all-mpnet-base-v2, and All-distilroberta-v1) on a convenience sample of 6110 articles from a published systematic review. The authors of this review manually screened the dataset and identified 24 target articles that addressed the Focused Questions (FQ) of the review. We applied the four sentence transformers to the dataset and, using the FQ as a query, performed a semantic similarity search on the dataset. The models identified similarities between the FQ and the target articles to a varying degree, and, sorting the dataset by semantic similarities using the best-performing model (all-mpnet-base-v2), the target articles could be found in the top 700 papers out of the 6110 dataset. Our data indicate that the choice of an appropriate pre-trained model could remarkably reduce the number of articles to screen and the time to completion for systematic reviews.
The aim of this review was to summarize the advantages and pitfalls of the available osteoporotic animal models of bone healing. A thorough literature search was performed in MEDLINE via OVID and ...EMBASE to identify animal studies investigating the effect of experimental osteoporosis on bone healing and bone regeneration. The osteotomy model in the proximal tibia is the most popular osseous defect model to study the bone healing process in osteoporotic-like conditions, although other well-characterized models, such as the post-extraction model, might be taken into consideration by future studies. The regenerative potential of osteoporotic bone and its response to biomaterials/regenerative techniques has not been clarified yet, and the critical size defect model might be an appropriate tool to serve this purpose. Since an ideal animal model for simulating osteoporosis does not exist, the type of bone remodeling, the animal lifespan, the age of peak bone mass, and the economic and ethical implications should be considered in our selection process. Furthermore, the influence of animal species, sex, age, and strain on the outcome measurement should be taken into account. In order to make future studies meaningful, standardized international guidelines for osteoporotic animal models of bone healing need to be set up.
Objectives
The aim of this systematic review was to assess whether the systemic skeletal reduction of bone mineral density (BMD) that characterizes osteoporotic subjects is also associated with a ...reduction of BMD in the jawbones.
Material and methods
Two reviewers searched independently and in duplicate three databases up to May 2014 and assessed the risk of bias using a tailored version of the Newcastle–Ottawa scale (NOS). Only papers reporting either Pearson's correlation coefficient or Spearman's rank correlation coefficient between skeletal and jawbone mineral density in more than five osteoporotic subjects were selected.
Results
From 1763 citations, 64 full‐text papers were screened and five papers that met the inclusion criteria were included in the final analysis. None of the included studies complied with all NOS criteria, and as only two studies were eligible for meta‐analysis, this was not performed.
Conclusions
Only limited conclusions can be drawn from this systematic review, due to the small number of studies included, their heterogeneity, and their high risk of bias. Future studies that take into consideration both upper and lower jaws, that use the same technique to measure skeletal and jaw BMD (ideally dual‐energy X‐ray absorptiometry, DXA), and that account for confounding variables (such as medications/diseases affecting bone metabolism and demographics) are needed to provide more robust conclusions.
The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of the androgenic hormone testosterone enanthate (TE) on human MG-63 cells. MG-63 were cultured for 24 h in the presence of TE at increasing ...concentrations to assess its lethal dose. Therefore, the suitable concentration for a prolonged use of TE in vitro was assessed by viability assay over 9 days. Finally, MG-63 were exposed to TE for 14 days and assayed for differentiation by qPCR and Alizarin Red S staining. TE in the amount of 100 µM resulted as the maximum dose tolerated by MG-63 cells after 24 h. However, a prolonged exposure in culture TE in the amount of 100 µM showed a cytostatic effect on cell proliferation. On the contrary, TE 10 µM was tolerated by the cells and did not boost cell proliferation, but did enhance new bone formation, as revealed by COL1A1, ALPL, BGLAP, and IBSP gene expression after 3, 7, and 14 days, and calcium deposition by Alizarin Red S staining after 14 days. Based on the current study, 10 µM is the critical dose of TE that should be used in vitro to support bone differentiation of MG-63 cells.
Abstract Statement of problem The position of dental implants placed with software-guided systems should be highly accurate in order to ensure safety and a passive fit of the immediate prosthesis. ...Purpose The purpose of this study was to measure the discrepancy between the clinical and software-planned position of dental implants by applying a photogrammetric method. Material and methods Two casts were obtained, 1 from the surgical template and 1 from the actual position of the implants on the alveolar ridge of a patient. Photogrammetry was then applied to precisely locate the position of each implant on the casts. Because this mathematical technique required the identification of image points and of the relative spatial coordinates, 4 marks were drilled on the implant screw. The position of the implants was then identified as the geometric center of the 4 marks, while the orientation of the implant axis was represented by a vector normal to the plane fitting the points. A series of 16 convergent images all around the object was made using a high-resolution digital camera. A mathematical method called “rototranslation” was used to superimpose the cast images for the comparison. Results The tests performed on the casts resulted in an average precision level of 4 μm for the locations and less than 1 degree for the axis of the implants. A series of empirical and numerical tests were performed to assess the performance of the procedure and of the measurement protocol. Conclusions The photogrammetric method is reproducible and can be used to measure the discrepancy between the software-planned and the real position of dental implants. Considering that the average precision level required for an implant-based prosthesis is approximately 50 μm, the error associated with this method can be considered as negligible.