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Journal of Medicine and Life 2014Epidemiological studies have implicated dental calculus as an ideal substrate for subgingival microbial colonization. Therefore, the main objective of periodontal... (Review)
Review
Epidemiological studies have implicated dental calculus as an ideal substrate for subgingival microbial colonization. Therefore, the main objective of periodontal therapy is to eliminate the microbial biofilm along with the calculus deposits from the root surface by root surface debridement. Over the past years, a large number of clinical and laboratory studies have been conducted to evaluate the efficacy of calculus removal by various methods. None of these conventional methods or devices was effective in completely eliminating all the calculus from the diseased root surfaces. In this context, a number of newer technologies have been developed to identify and selectively remove the dental calculus. Regarding this fact, the present article highlights a critical review of these devices based on published clinical and experimental data.
Topics: Dental Calculus; Dental Scaling; Fiber Optic Technology; Humans; Lasers; Periodontal Diseases; Ultrasonography
PubMed: 25870667
DOI: No ID Found -
Scientific Reports Jun 2018Dental calculus (calcified dental plaque) is prevalent in archaeological skeletal collections and is a rich source of oral microbiome and host-derived ancient...
Dental calculus (calcified dental plaque) is prevalent in archaeological skeletal collections and is a rich source of oral microbiome and host-derived ancient biomolecules. Recently, it has been proposed that dental calculus may provide a more robust environment for DNA preservation than other skeletal remains, but this has not been systematically tested. In this study, shotgun-sequenced data from paired dental calculus and dentin samples from 48 globally distributed individuals are compared using a metagenomic approach. Overall, we find DNA from dental calculus is consistently more abundant and less contaminated than DNA from dentin. The majority of DNA in dental calculus is microbial and originates from the oral microbiome; however, a small but consistent proportion of DNA (mean 0.08 ± 0.08%, range 0.007-0.47%) derives from the host genome. Host DNA content within dentin is variable (mean 13.70 ± 18.62%, range 0.003-70.14%), and for a subset of dentin samples (15.21%), oral bacteria contribute > 20% of total DNA. Human DNA in dental calculus is highly fragmented, and is consistently shorter than both microbial DNA in dental calculus and human DNA in paired dentin samples. Finally, we find that microbial DNA fragmentation patterns are associated with guanine-cytosine (GC) content, but not aspects of cellular structure.
Topics: Bacteria; DNA, Bacterial; Dental Calculus; Dentin; Humans; Metagenomics; Microbiota; Preservation, Biological
PubMed: 29959351
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-28091-9 -
Journal of Oral Biology and... 2023Dental calculus, formed by mineralization of plaque predisposes to the development of periodontal disease.
CONTEXT
Dental calculus, formed by mineralization of plaque predisposes to the development of periodontal disease.
AIM
To evaluate the influence of salivary urea and the presence of ureolytic bacteria on dental calculus formation and periodontal status in patients with good, fair and poor oral hygiene.
MATERIAL AND METHODS
An observational cross-sectional study was carried out on 135 patients, 18-60 years of age. Based on the simplified calculus index, patients were divided into three groups, good oral hygiene, fair oral hygiene and poor oral hygiene. Clinical parameters such as plaque index, gingival index, pocket probing depth and clinical attachment level and salivary pH were recorded for each subject. Saliva samples were collected to evaluate the urea levels using autoanalyzer method. Supragingival calculus samples were collected and presence and quantification of ureolytic bacteria were done by gram staining and bacterial culture and confirmed by biochemical reaction. For statistical analysis, test like Shapiro-Wilk test, Kruskal Wallis and Spearman's rho were used.
RESULTS
Increase in salivary pH was associated with increased odds of higher calculus index score (odds ratio = 2.785). There was a non-significant weak correlation between salivary urea and ureolytic bacteria in dental calculus in all the three groups (p > 0.05). Higher calculus index score was associated with increased odds of presence of ureolytic bacteria (odds ratio>1).
CONCLUSIONS
Higher level of ureolytic bacteria with increasing calculus index score may breakdown the salivary urea to ammonia resulting in a ureolytic pH rise that facilitate calcium phosphate saturation leading to more calculus formation.
PubMed: 36345494
DOI: 10.1016/j.jobcr.2022.10.004 -
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal... Nov 2020Human microbiome studies are increasingly incorporating macroecological approaches, such as community assembly, network analysis and functional redundancy to more fully...
Human microbiome studies are increasingly incorporating macroecological approaches, such as community assembly, network analysis and functional redundancy to more fully characterize the microbiome. Such analyses have not been applied to ancient human microbiomes, preventing insights into human microbiome evolution. We address this issue by analysing published ancient microbiome datasets: coprolites from Rio Zape ( = 7; 700 CE Mexico) and historic dental calculus ( = 44; 1770-1855 CE, UK), as well as two novel dental calculus datasets: Maya ( = 7; 170 BCE-885 CE, Belize) and Nuragic Sardinians ( = 11; 1400-850 BCE, Italy). Periodontitis-associated bacteria (, and ) were identified as keystone taxa in the dental calculus datasets. Coprolite keystone taxa included known short-chain fatty acid producers () and potentially disease-associated bacteria (, . Overlap in ecological profiles between ancient and modern microbiomes was indicated by similarity in functional response diversity profiles between contemporary hunter-gatherers and ancient coprolites, as well as parallels between ancient Maya, historic UK, and modern Spanish dental calculus; however, the ancient Nuragic dental calculus shows a distinct ecological structure. We detected key ecological signatures from ancient microbiome data, paving the way to expand understanding of human microbiome evolution. This article is part of the theme issue 'Insights into health and disease from ancient biomolecules'.
Topics: Archaeology; Bacteria; Belize; DNA, Ancient; DNA, Bacterial; Dental Calculus; Feces; High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing; History, Ancient; History, Medieval; Humans; Italy; Mexico; Microbiota
PubMed: 33012230
DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2019.0586 -
International Journal of Dentistry 2017Salivary constituents have a wide range of functions including oral calcium homeostasis. Salivary proteins such as statherin inhibit crystal growth of calcium phosphate...
BACKGROUND
Salivary constituents have a wide range of functions including oral calcium homeostasis. Salivary proteins such as statherin inhibit crystal growth of calcium phosphate in supersaturated solutions and interact with several oral bacteria to adsorb on hydroxyapatite. Concurrently, saliva, which is supersaturated with respect to calcium phosphates, is the driving force for plaque mineralization and formation of calculus. Thus, the aim of the present study was to estimate and correlate salivary statherin and calcium concentration to the dental calculus formation.
METHODS
A cross-sectional study was conducted to assess the relationship between salivary statherin, calcium, and dental calculus among 70 subjects, aged 20-55 years. Subjects were divided into 3 groups based on the calculus scores as interpreted by Calculus Index which was followed by collection of whole saliva using Super•SAL™. Salivary calcium levels were assessed by calorimetric method using Calcium Assay kit (Cayman Chemical, Michigan, USA) and statherin levels by using ELISA Kit (Cusabio Biotech).
RESULTS
Statherin levels showed a weak negative correlation with the calcium levels and with calculus formation. The mean salivary statherin and calcium concentration were found to be 0.96 g/ml and 3.87 mg/ml, respectively. Salivary statherin levels differed significantly among the three groups ( < 0.05).
CONCLUSIONS
Our preliminary data indicates that statherin could possibly play a role in the formation of dental calculus.
PubMed: 28572822
DOI: 10.1155/2017/2857629 -
Imaging Science in Dentistry Sep 2023The objective of this study was to evaluate the accuracy and effectiveness of an artificial intelligence (AI) program in identifying dental conditions using panoramic...
PURPOSE
The objective of this study was to evaluate the accuracy and effectiveness of an artificial intelligence (AI) program in identifying dental conditions using panoramic radiographs (PRs), as well as to assess the appropriateness of its treatment recommendations.
MATERIAL AND METHODS
PRs from 100 patients (representing 4497 teeth) with known clinical examination findings were randomly selected from a university database. Three dentomaxillofacial radiologists and the Diagnocat AI software evaluated these PRs. The evaluations were focused on various dental conditions and treatments, including canal filling, caries, cast post and core, dental calculus, fillings, furcation lesions, implants, lack of interproximal tooth contact, open margins, overhangs, periapical lesions, periodontal bone loss, short fillings, voids in root fillings, overfillings, pontics, root fragments, impacted teeth, artificial crowns, missing teeth, and healthy teeth.
RESULTS
The AI demonstrated almost perfect agreement (exceeding 0.81) in most of the assessments when compared to the ground truth. The sensitivity was very high (above 0.8) for the evaluation of healthy teeth, artificial crowns, dental calculus, missing teeth, fillings, lack of interproximal contact, periodontal bone loss, and implants. However, the sensitivity was low for the assessment of caries, periapical lesions, pontic voids in the root canal, and overhangs.
CONCLUSION
Despite the limitations of this study, the synthesized data suggest that AI-based decision support systems can serve as a valuable tool in detecting dental conditions, when used with PR for clinical dental applications.
PubMed: 37799743
DOI: 10.5624/isd.20230109 -
International Journal of Dentistry 2021The growing epidemic of chronic diseases afflicting both developed and developing countries is related to diet and lifestyle. The current dietary assessment still has...
The growing epidemic of chronic diseases afflicting both developed and developing countries is related to diet and lifestyle. The current dietary assessment still has many constraints, particularly related to the objectivity of data gathering. Dental calculus, which is usually considered as medical waste in dental treatment, turns out to be a provider of abundant oral information. The objective of this study is to obtain the correlation between the macronutrient content of dental calculus and nutritional intake based on FFQ. This research is an analytic observational study with a case-control study design. Samples consisting of 35 obese individuals and 21 normal-weight individuals were taken using purposive sampling. The nutritional intake data were obtained using FFQ. The macronutrient content of dental calculus was checked using a colorimetric assay. The comparison between obese individuals and normal-weight individuals was tested using the Mann-Whitney test and -test. The correlation between the macronutrient content of dental calculus and nutritional intake based on FFQ was measured using Spearman's rank-order correlation. The results showed there was a correlation between the macronutrient content of dental calculus and macronutrient intake based on FFQ. However, strong correlation was found only between fat intake with the total lipid content of dental calculus with rs = 0.521 and between carbohydrate intake with the total carbohydrate content of dental calculus with rs = 0.519. It was concluded that carbohydrate, protein, and lipid intake can be assessed using dental calculus. Dental calculus can be an alternative source of noninvasive, inexpensive, and specific dietary biomarkers.
PubMed: 34531913
DOI: 10.1155/2021/5579208 -
Journal of Proteome Research Oct 2023Dental calculus is becoming a crucial material in the study of past populations with increasing interest in its proteomic and genomic content. Here, we suggest further...
Dental calculus is becoming a crucial material in the study of past populations with increasing interest in its proteomic and genomic content. Here, we suggest further development of a protocol for analysis of ancient proteins and a combined approach for subsequent ancient DNA extraction. We tested the protocol on recent teeth, and the optimized protocol was applied to ancient tooth to limit the destruction of calculus as it is a precious and irreplaceable source of dietary, microbiological, and ecological information in the archeological context. Finally, the applicability of the protocol was demonstrated on samples of the ancient calculus.
PubMed: 37699853
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jproteome.3c00370 -
American Journal of Physical... Mar 2019Dental calculus is among the richest known sources of ancient DNA in the archaeological record. Although most DNA within calculus is microbial, it has been shown to...
OBJECTIVES
Dental calculus is among the richest known sources of ancient DNA in the archaeological record. Although most DNA within calculus is microbial, it has been shown to contain sufficient human DNA for the targeted retrieval of whole mitochondrial genomes. Here, we explore whether calculus is also a viable substrate for whole human genome recovery using targeted enrichment techniques.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Total DNA extracted from 24 paired archaeological human dentin and calculus samples was subjected to whole human genome enrichment using in-solution hybridization capture and high-throughput sequencing.
RESULTS
Total DNA from calculus exceeded that of dentin in all cases, and although the proportion of human DNA was generally lower in calculus, the absolute human DNA content of calculus and dentin was not significantly different. Whole genome enrichment resulted in up to four-fold enrichment of the human endogenous DNA content for both dentin and dental calculus libraries, albeit with some loss in complexity. Recovering more on-target reads for the same sequencing effort generally improved the quality of downstream analyses, such as sex and ancestry estimation. For nonhuman DNA, comparison of phylum-level microbial community structure revealed few differences between precapture and postcapture libraries, indicating that off-target sequences in human genome-enriched calculus libraries may still be useful for oral microbiome reconstruction.
DISCUSSION
While ancient human dental calculus does contain endogenous human DNA sequences, their relative proportion is low when compared with other skeletal tissues. Whole genome enrichment can help increase the proportion of recovered human reads, but in this instance enrichment efficiency was relatively low when compared with other forms of capture. We conclude that further optimization is necessary before the method can be routinely applied to archaeological samples.
Topics: Archaeology; DNA, Ancient; Dental Calculus; Dentin; Female; Genome, Human; Genomics; Humans; Male; Sequence Analysis, DNA
PubMed: 30586168
DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.23763