Alpha- smooth muscle actin expression in the human dental pulp tissue of mobile teeth

Abstract EN

Tooth mobility is a degree of tooth looseness in its bony socket.

A slight degree is accepted as a normal physiologic mobility of all types of the teeth in the oral cavity.

During the tooth mobility due to different causes several biological processes take place, during these biological processes the dental pulp tissue is subjected to structural and protein expression modifications in order to maintain their integrity and functional morphology.

The aim of this study is to evaluate Alpha- smooth muscle actin expression in the human dental pulp tissue of mobile teeth.

Method: Acrosssectional study of 66 extracted teeth with their pulp tissue (49 with mobility and 17 as non-mobile control group); the samples were processed, and the immunohistochemical reaction of the Alpha- smooth muscle actin (α-SMA) marker for each sample were analyzed.

Results: Among the mobile teeth group (29) were with mild to moderate mobility, (20) with sever mobility.

The Alpha- smooth muscle actin (α-SMA) positive results were obtained in (7) samples of the teeth with sever mobility and (21) samples of teeth with mild to moderate mobility were compared to (9) positive cases of control group.

Conclusion: The data demonstrate that the dental pulp tissue does not expresses any irreversible histological alterations with mild to moderate teeth mobility compared to the irreversible changes that obtained in the pulp tissue of the sever mobile group.

In conclusion the type of treatment required for the mobile teeth will depend on the responses of the pulp and the supporting periapical tissues to determine the outcome of the involved teeth sequel.