Antimicrobial photodynamic therapy compared to systemic antibiotic therapy in non-surgical treatment of periodontitis: Systematic review and meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: Periodontitis is one of the most prevalent inflammatory diseases in humans. It is associated with the presence of bacteria and is mediated by the host's immune response This study represents a systematic review and meta-analysis trying to answer the following question: "What is the effect of antimicrobial photodynamic therapy (aPDT) as an adjunct to scaling and root planing (SRP) compared to systemic antibiotic therapy with amoxicillin plus metronidazole (AMX+MTZ) on the non-surgical treatment of periodontitis?". METHODS: Clinical studies comparing aPDT with systemic use of AMX+MTZ were searched until January of 2020 using the databases: PubMed, MEDLINE, SCOPUS, EMBASE, Cochrane Central, Web of Science and Scielo, as well manual searches in related journals. Periodontal clinical parameters such as probing depth (PD), clinical attachment level (CAL) and bleeding on probing (BOP) were statistically analyzed. RESULTS: Five randomized clinical studies (RCTs) were included within the eligibility criteria, and served as a basis for qualitative and quantitative analyzes. All the studies reported an improvement in the clinical parameters with both therapies, although in a direct comparison, our analyzes did not find statistical differences that indicate the superiority of one supporting treatment in relation to the other. CONCLUSION: Although the limited number of RCTs and the great heterogeneity between them, it can conclude that aPDT presents similar clinical results compared to antibiotic therapy with AMX+MTZ as adjuvants in the non-surgical treatment of periodontitis

Evaluation of bleach-sedimentation for sterilising and concentrating Mycobacterium tuberculosis in sputum specimens

RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are.Abstract Background Bleach-sedimentation may improve microscopy for diagnosing tuberculosis by sterilising sputum and concentrating Mycobacterium tuberculosis. We studied gravity bleach-sedimentation effects on safety, sensitivity, speed and reliability of smear-microscopy. Methods This blinded, controlled study used sputum specimens (n = 72) from tuberculosis patients. Bleach concentrations and exposure times required to sterilise sputum (n = 31) were determined. In the light of these results, the performance of 5 gravity bleach-sedimentation techniques that sterilise sputum specimens (n = 16) were compared. The best-performing of these bleach-sedimentation techniques involved adding 1 volume of 5% bleach to 1 volume of sputum, shaking for 10-minutes, diluting in 8 volumes distilled water and sedimenting overnight before microscopy. This technique was further evaluated by comparing numbers of visible acid-fast bacilli, slide-reading speed and reliability for triplicate smears before versus after bleach-sedimentation of sputum specimens (n = 25). Triplicate smears were made to increase precision and were stained using the Ziehl-Neelsen method. Results M. tuberculosis in sputum was successfully sterilised by adding equal volumes of 15% bleach for 1-minute, 6% for 5-minutes or 3% for 20-minutes. Bleach-sedimentation significantly decreased the number of acid-fast bacilli visualised compared with conventional smears (geometric mean of acid-fast bacilli per 100 microscopy fields 166, 95%CI 68-406, versus 346, 95%CI 139-862, respectively; p = 0.02). Bleach-sedimentation diluted paucibacillary specimens less than specimens with higher concentrations of visible acid-fast bacilli (p = 0.02). Smears made from bleach-sedimented sputum were read more rapidly than conventional smears (9.6 versus 11.2 minutes, respectively, p = 0.03). Counting conventional acid-fast bacilli had high reliability (inter-observer agreement, r = 0.991) that was significantly reduced (p = 0.03) by bleach-sedimentation (to r = 0.707) because occasional strongly positive bleach-sedimented smears were misread as negative. Conclusions Gravity bleach-sedimentation improved laboratory safety by sterilising sputum but decreased the concentration of acid-fast bacilli visible on microscopy, especially for sputum specimens containing high concentrations of M. tuberculosis. Bleach-sedimentation allowed examination of more of each specimen in the time available but decreased the inter-observer reliability with which slides were read. Thus bleach-sedimentation effects vary depending upon specimen characteristics and whether microscopy was done for a specified time, or until a specified number of microscopy fields had been read. These findings provide an explanation for the contradictory results of previous studies.Peer Reviewe

TRPA1 Contributes to the Acute Inflammatory Response and Mediates Carrageenan-Induced Paw Edema in the Mouse

Transient receptor potential ankyrin 1 (TRPA1) is an ion channel involved in thermosensation and nociception. TRPA1 is activated by exogenous irritants and also by oxidants formed in inflammatory reactions. However, our understanding of its role in inflammation is limited. Here, we tested the hypothesis that TRPA1 is involved in acute inflammatory edema. The TRPA1 agonist allyl isothiocyanate (AITC) induced inflammatory edema when injected intraplantarly to mice, mimicking the classical response to carrageenan. Interestingly, the TRPA1 antagonist HC-030031 and the cyclo-oxygenase (COX) inhibitor ibuprofen inhibited not only AITC but also carrageenan-induced edema. TRPA1-deficient mice displayed attenuated responses to carrageenan and AITC. Furthermore, AITC enhanced COX-2 expression in HEK293 cells transfected with human TRPA1, a response that was reversed by HC-030031. This study demonstrates a hitherto unknown role of TRPA1 in carrageenan-induced inflammatory edema. The results also strongly suggest that TRPA1 contributes, in a COX-dependent manner, to the development of acute inflammation

Allosteric Analysis of Glucocorticoid Receptor-DNA Interface Induced by Cyclic Py-Im Polyamide: A Molecular Dynamics Simulation Study

Background: It has been extensively developed in recent years that cell-permeable small molecules, such as polyamide, can be programmed to disrupt transcription factor-DNA interfaces and can silence aberrant gene expression. For example, cyclic pyrrole-imidazole polyamide that competes with glucocorticoid receptor (GR) for binding to glucocorticoid response elements could be expected to affect the DNA dependent binding by interfering with the protein-DNA interface. However, how such small molecules affect the transcription factor-DNA interfaces and gene regulatory pathways through DNA structure distortion is not fully understood so far. Methodology/Principal Findings: In the present work, we have constructed some models, especially the ternary model of polyamides+DNA+GR DNA-binding domain (GRDBD) dimer, and carried out molecular dynamics simulations and free energy calculations for them to address how polyamide molecules disrupt the GRDBD and DNA interface when polyamide and protein bind at the same sites on opposite grooves of DNA. Conclusions/Significance: We found that the cyclic polyamide binding in minor groove of DNA can induce a large structural perturbation of DNA, i.e. a.4 A ˚ widening of the DNA minor groove and a compression of the major groove by more than 4A ˚ as compared with the DNA molecule in the GRDBD dimer+DNA complex. Further investigations for the ternary system of polyamides+DNA+GRDBD dimer and the binary system of allosteric DNA+GRDBD dimer revealed that the compression o