Periodontal Disease Bacteria Tied to Alzheimer’s Disease

by

An interesting article titled “Alzheimer’s Disease-Like Neurodegeneration in Porphyromonas gingivalis Infected Neurons with Persistent Expression of Active Gingipains” appears in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease written by Ursula Haditsch et al. (no. 75, pp. 1361–1376, 2020). The article seeks to explore the connections between Porphyromonas gingivalis (P. gingivalis), the main pathogen that causes chronic periodontitis, and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). In the article, the researchers sought to show that intraneuronal P. gingivalis and gingipain expression in vitro after infecting neurons derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC). The researchers looked at the effect of the bacteria on the neurons at 24, 48, and 72 hours. The researchers used transmission electron microscopy, confocal microscopy, and bacterial colony to cause infection. They monitored gingipain expression by immunofluorescence and RT-qPCR, and protease activity with activity-based probes. The researchers used immunofluorescence, western blot, and ELISA to … Read more

Reducing Anxiety among Pediatric Dental Patients

by

An interesting article titled “an Anxiety Reduction Program as an Alternative to General Anesthesia for the Anxious Pediatric Dental Patient” was presented on July 23, 2021, at the virtual session of the 2021 International Association for Dental Research (IADR)/AADR/CADR General Session written by Suher Baker and et al. The research set to investigate the efficacy of a systematic Anxiety Reduction Program (ARP) using progressive desensitization to reduce anxiety in children to a level that would allow dental treatment to be performed in-office without the use of general anesthesia. Dental anxiety has been covered on this site before see for example the post Dental Anxiety and Fear: Impact on Oral Health. Children are more likely to experience an unfavorable and unforeseen incident caused by an error or omission during dental treatment that has negative health consequencies. This is because children do … Read more

Iatrogenic Fracture of the Mandibular Angle During Wisdom Tooth Surgery

by

An interesting article titled “Iatrogenic Fracture of the Mandibular Angle During Excision of an Impacted Third Molar” appears in Cureus in August 04, 2022, written by Agrawal P, Jadhav A, Bhola N D (vol. 14, no. 8, pp. e27672). The article discusses a case of a 30 year old woman who had atrogenic mandibular angle fracture after having an impacted wisdom tooth removed. In the article, the authors mention of a 30 year old woman visited their outpatient department complaining of pain and swelling over the lower right side of her face with an inability to open her mouth and chew for the last four days. Prior to this, she had her lower right impacted wisdom tooth removed under local anesthesia. On exam, the woman was found to have an asymmetrical face due to swelling over the lower right region … Read more

What is the Estimated Amount of Wisdom Teeth Extractions in the US

by

An interesting article titled “Estimated Cumulative Incidence of Wisdom Tooth Extractions in Privately Insured US Patients,” written by Alan R. Schroeder and et. al. appears in Frontiers in Dental Medicine (July 2022, vol. 3, article 937165). The article sought to determine the cumulative incidence and predictors of wisdom teeth extractions in the US. The article was motived by some of the controversy around wisdom teeth extractions and to better provide frequency estimates of the procedure to help inform future quality improvement initiatives and/or clinical trials. The authors used a national dental insurance claims database of privately insured patients (IBM MarketScan Dental Database), to help estimate the incidence of wisdom teeth extractions in the US and to determine variation by sex and geographic region. The authors included all patients in the database for their study who were under 60 years of … Read more

Tramadol dexketoprofen combination effective for relieving wisdom teeth surgery pain

by

Effective pain control for wisdom teeth surgery continues to be an area of much interest. In an article titled “ANALGESIC EFFICACY OF TRAMADOL/DEXKETOPROFEN VSIBUPROFEN AFTER IMPACTED LOWER THIRD MOLAR EXTRACTION: A RANDOMIZED CONTROLLED CLINICAL TRIAL,” appearing in the Journal of Evidence Based Dental Practice written by C. Vallecillo and et al. (volume 21, issue 4, December 2021, 101618) the authors explore ibuprofen or tramadol-dexketoprofen as pain control after wisdom teeth surgery. In the article the researchers explored the effectiveness of Enanplus a capsule consisting of 75 mg tramadol hydrochloride and 25 mg dexketoprofen that is sold outside the U.S. Tramadol is an opioid class medication that inhibits the reuptake of noradrenaline and serotonin. Dexketoprofen is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) that has with fewer adverse effects than other more common NSAIDs. The authors conducted adouble-blind, parallel-group, randomized controlled clinical trial … Read more