Clinical evaluation of periodontal status in subjects with multibracket appliances and the role of age and gender during initial months of fixed orthodontic treatment

Screening for Selenomonas noxia in a Pediatric and Adolescent Patient Population Reveals Differential Oral Prevalence across Age Groups

Selenomonas noxia, a gram-negative anaerobe usually present in periodontitis, may be linked to overweight and obese adults. Recent advancements include a valid qPCR screening, enabling an effective prevalence study among pediatric patients aged 7 to 17 years. The aim of this study was to complete a retrospective screening of saliva samples from an existing biorepository using a validated qPCR screening protocol. The pediatric study sample (n = 87) comprised nearly equal numbers of males and females, mostly minority patients (67%), with an average age of 13.2 years. Screening for Selenomonas noxia revealed 34.4% (n = 30/87) positive samples, evenly distributed between males and females (p = 0.5478). However, an age-dependent association was observed with higher percentages of positive samples observed with higher ages (13.3% among 7 to 10 years; 34.6% among 11 to 13 years; 54.8% among 14-17 years), which was statistically significant (p = 0.0001). Although these findings revealed no noteworthy distinctions between males or females and minorities and non-minorities, the notable contrast between younger (7 to 10 years) and older (11 to 17 years) participants, possibly influenced by factors such as hormones and behavioral traits, will require further investigation of this patient population.

Effect of conventional and self-ligating brackets on periodontal health. Systematic review and meta-analysis

Background

To compare the effect of conventional brackets and self-ligating brackets on periodontal health.

Material and Methods

A search of information up to October 2022 was carried out in the following electronic databases: PubMed/MEDLINE, Cochrane Library, Scopus, Web of Science (WoS), EMBASE, SciELO and Google Scholar. We included studies that were randomised clinical trials, dealing with conventional brackets and self-ligating brackets and their effect on periodontal health, with no language restriction and no time limit. The Risk of Bias 2 (Rob 2.0) tool was used to determine the risk of bias of the included studies. The information selected from the studies was entered and analysed with RevMan 5.3, using the mean and standard deviation with a 95% confidence interval as a measure. Finally, an analysis was performed using the GRADE system to classify the quality of the evidence and grade the strength of the recommendation.

Results

The preliminary search yielded a total of 399 articles, discarding those that did not meet the selection criteria, leaving only 13 articles. The effect of conventional and self-ligating brackets on periodontal health was determined using periodontal probing depth (PPD), plaque index (PI), gingival index (GI) and bleeding index (BI), showing advantages of self-ligating brackets in PI and BI, and no differences compared to self-ligating brackets in PPD and GI.

Conclusions

Self-ligating brackets probably better preserve periodontal health compared to conventional brackets regarding plaque accumulation and bleeding on probing. Key words:Conventional brackets, self-ligating brackets, periodontal health, orthodontic treatment, systematic review, meta-analysis.