In vitro evaluation of dental materials.
Biocompatibility has been described as the ability of a material to perform with an appropriate host response in a specific application. Appropriate host response means no (or a tolerable) adverse reaction of a living system to the presence of such a material.  An adverse reaction may be due to the toxicity of a dental material. Therefore toxicity may be regarded as one reason for nonbiocompatibility of a dental material.  The toxicity of a dental material can be evaluated by in vitro tests, animal experiments and clinical trials. There exists a variety of different in vitro test methods. The most widely used biological systems for toxicity screening of dental materials are cell cultures.  Cell cultures for toxicity screening of dental materials are valuable tools for understanding their biological behavior, if the limitations of the methods are taken into consideration, especially concerning the interpretation of the results.  Further research should concentrate on better simulations of the in vivo situation in cell cultures. In this review the applications of various cell culture methods to evaluate the cytotoxicity of a wide range of dental materials, e.g. metals, alloys, polymers and cements, are described.
School of Dentistry, Department of Prosthodontics, University of Athens, Greece.
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Polyzois
D000818:Animals; D001672:Biocompatible Materials; D001681:Biological Assay / Q000379:methods; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D003764:Dental Materials / Q000633:toxicity*; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D006801:Humans; D008422:Materials Testing; D012107:Research Design