Now That Periodontitis Is Considered An Autoimmune Disease, There’s New Research Into Treatment

During that time, there was the Civil Rights Movement, the Cultural Revolution, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, and Armstrong landed on the moon. The tumultuous Vietnam War boiled for 20 years, the first Concorde travelled faster than the speed of sound, and everyone started to get computer savvy. AIDS wiped out 35 million people, Latin America went bankrupt, and the internet emerged as something brilliant rather than ubiquitous. The planet’s worst industrial disaster, Bhopal, happened; the space shuttle Challenger exploded, and the stock market tanked on Black Monday.

There was the Iran-Contra affair, the Berlin Wall fell, Operation Desert Storm raged, the Cold War ended and the EU became a reality. Amazon.com and Google were born, the International Space Station opened, 9/11 changed the world, Facebook was founded and America elected its first African American president. Offshore drilling rig Deepwater Horizon exploded, Bin Laden was killed and the God Particle was found. NASA flew 4.8 billion kilometres to observe the dwarf planet Pluto, and the remaining nine years brought pretty much nothing but global political, health and climate disasters.

All in all, it’s been a long time, a hard road and a lot of changes.

Within that, are the many studies on periodontal disease; of which there are more than a billion cases worldwide. Statistically, between 35-50% of the global adult population over the age of 30 suffers with it. It’s an inflammatory condition of three basic components: an imbalance of oral bacteria, inflammation of the gums, and damage to the soft tissue structures and bone that support the teeth.

Untreated, gum disease not only eventually leads to tooth loss, but inflamed periodontal tissue presents a ‘periodontal disease burden’. This means that those with the condition are at an unfortunately high risk of any number of systemic diseases that affect most of the major organs, including the brain.

These associations with the likes of heart disease, stroke, and some cancers is also relative to several autoimmune diseases; including diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis. It suggested that periodontal disease either had an autoimmune component, or was entirely an autoimmune condition. A pathogen invading the body can cause significant harm on its own. However, the real destruction comes from the body’s own defenses.

Autoimmunity is a basic breakdown of the mechanism responsible for tolerance, that then creates an immune response against itself. It’s not really known why some people develop it, although often it’s genetic. For others, their genetic vulnerability is activated by an environmental factor – like infection, poor nutrition, pollution or smoking. Mostly autoimmune diseases are long-term. Symptoms usually come and go, and people will experience the same illness differently.

What all autoimmune diseases have in common, is inflammation. Periodontal disease is now classified as an autoimmune disorder because the chronic gum inflammation is the result of body attacking itself. The bacteria held responsible doesn’t actually cause the condition – it triggers the immune system which leads to the inflammation that creates the bone loss around the teeth.

Seeking a new treatment for periodontitis, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Dental Medicine took a new perspective and targeted the immune system. Microparticles containing an immunomodulator protein – CCL2 – was directly delivered into the gums of mice. The result was inhibited bone loss, with accelerated repair at different stages of the disease.

In periodontal disease most macrophages are M1 type, which creates inflammation. CCL2 treatment changed these cells to M2 – making them anti-inflammatory. Compounding this interesting finding, is that it’s a really useful model for finding improved therapeutic methods for other autoimmune disorders.

Being given deep dental cleaning at clinics like this dentist in Sunbury is enough to treat the inflammation for up to 80% of patients, and it goes away.

For others, no matter the regular appointments and meticulous oral hygiene routine, there’s still bone loss. There’s little available therapy for this kind of severe and aggressive periodontitis, and CCL2 treatments could really help. It’s likely to be developed as a complementary remedy to conventional bacteria-targeting therapies – being deep cleans and antibiotics. In terms of antibiotic resistance, a new paradigm is currently being explored by the Department of Molecular Pathobiology at NYU.

Clinically, the University of Pittsburg’s engineered system interconnecting with the complexities of autoimmumity and the severity of periodontitis, is a tremendously different way to perceive this chronic condition.

It’s yet another recent and incredible breakthrough in treatment options for periodontal disease, that for the most part, has remained static for four decades. It includes a slow-release topical gel and oral strips that target an entirely innovative area of research into the condition; as well as a narrow spectrum antibiotic that treats the pathogenic bacteria of periodontitis, while keeping the sensitive and beneficial gut and oral microbiome completely unaffected.

Both research teams’ results have proven enormously successful in the restoration of gum and bone health affected by periodontitis.

There’s hope on the horizon with these ingeniously refined intervention processes and techniques in dealing with this far too common disease. All this current research has the potential to eventually find a cure; but most notably in the shorter term, it will positively change the lives of a billion people.

That could be the best news we’ve had in 60 years.

BOOK NOW

Note: All content and media on the  Sunbury Dental House website and social media channels are created and published online for informational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice and should not be relied on as health or personal advice.

Services Mentioned