Impact of hypercholesterolemia on dental pulp of the albino rat (an ultrastructural and immunohistoch emical investigation)‎

Abstract EN

The aim of the present work was to investigate the impact of short term and long term experimental hypercholesterolemia on the microscopic and submicroscopic structures of the dental pulp of the incisors of adult male albino rats.

The fibronectin immunohistochemistry of the aforementioned dental structure, as a trial to find out an answer to the question: could the term dental angina be introduced in the literature as a new terminology of a dental disease, similar to the term abdominal angina which is newly introduced in the medical field??.

Sixty healthy adult male albino rats were used and divided into 2 groups.

Group I: consisted of 20 rats served as controls and received control diet.

Group II: consisted of 40 rats served as the experimental hypercholesterolemic group and received hypercholesterolemic diet.

The experimental period lasted for 4 months.

Half the animals of each group were sacrificed by cervical dislocation after two months of the beginning of the experiment to study the short term effects of hypercholesterolemia on dental pulp.

The rest of the animals of each group were sacrificed by the same way after 4 months of the beginning of the experiment to study the long term effects of hypercholesterolemia on the tissues under investigation.

The results of the present investigation showed that high dietary cholesterol can initiate marked degenerative changes in the dental pulp.

Most of the vascular channels revealed thrombotic lesions in the form of total and subtotal occlusion of their lumina with marked increase in the thickness of their walls, a picture of typical dental angina.