A new method for alveolar bone repair using extracted teeth for the graft material.
BACKGROUND
In the clinical field of jawbone formation, the use of autogenous bone as the graft material is the gold standard. However, there are some problems with this technique, such as risk of infection on the donor side, the limited amount of available bone mass, and marked resorption of the grafted bone. We investigated the potential for using teeth as a bone graft material for jawbone formation because the dental pulp contains stem cells, including undifferentiated neural crest-derived cells.


METHODS
Alveolar bone defects were created in Wistar rats, and the defects were filled with either tooth or iliac bone graft material, or left as controls. The potential for using teeth as a bone graft material for jawbone formation was measured using real-time polymerase chain reaction, microcomputed tomography, and histologic analysis.


RESULTS
Polymerase chain reaction revealed that the expressions of P75, P0, nestin, and musashi-1 were significantly higher in teeth than in mandibular bone and iliac bone grafts. Hematoxylin and eosin staining and microcomputed tomography showed that at 8 weeks, tooth graft material produced a similar amount of new bone compared to iliac bone graft material. Osteopontin was expressed in both the tooth and iliac bone graft material at 6 and 8 weeks after surgery. Dentin sialoprotein was expressed in the tooth graft material in the new bone at 6 weeks only.


CONCLUSIONS
These results indicate that teeth may be an alternative material to autogenous bone for treating alveolar bone defects by grafting.
Nampo
Tomoki
T
Department of Orthodontics, School of Dentistry, Showa University, Tokyo, Japan.
Watahiki
Junichi
J
Enomoto
Akiko
A
Taguchi
Tomohiro
T
Ono
Miki
M
Nakano
Haruhisa
H
Yamamoto
Gou
G
Irie
Tarou
T
Tachikawa
Tetsuhiko
T
Maki
Koutaro
K
D016301:Alveolar Bone Loss / Q000601:surgery*; D000818:Animals; D001861:Bone Regeneration; D018786:Bone Substitutes; D016025:Bone Transplantation; D001842:Bone and Bones / Q000378:metabolism; D016326:Extracellular Matrix Proteins / Q000096:biosynthesis; D016557:Guided Tissue Regeneration, Periodontal / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D008334:Mandible / Q000601:surgery; D009419:Nerve Tissue Proteins / Q000096:biosynthesis; D053495:Osteopontin / Q000096:biosynthesis; D010750:Phosphoproteins / Q000096:biosynthesis; D051381:Rats; D017208:Rats, Wistar; D012795:Sialoglycoproteins / Q000096:biosynthesis; D014070:Tooth / Q000378:metabolism / Q000637:transplantation*; D000099311:Dentin Sialophosphoprotein
D018786:Bone Substitutes; D016326:Extracellular Matrix Proteins; D009419:Nerve Tissue Proteins; D053495:Osteopontin; D010750:Phosphoproteins; D012795:Sialoglycoproteins; D000099311:Dentin Sialophosphoprotein