Supplement Consumption and Periodontal Health: An Exploratory Survey Using the BigMouth Repository.

BACKGROUND: Dietary supplements have been investigated for their impact on the periodontal apparatus (alveolar bone, mucosa, periodontal ligament, and cementum) and their hypothetical protective role against periodontitis. There remains a gap in the field in this area. Thus, the present study aims to examine the correlation between populations who report taking different dietary supplements and their relative periodontal health. METHODS: The BigMouth dental data repository derived from the dental Electronic Health Records (EHRs) of the University of Michigan school of dentistry was used to extract data relating to all patients who fulfilled the eligibility criteria. The prevalence of periodontitis compared to periodontal health as related to supplement consumption was assessed. RESULTS: A total of 118,426 individuals (55,459 males and 62,967 females) with self-reported consumption of the dietary supplements of interest were identified in the University of Michigan database via the BigMouth repository. Associations with the following vitamins were investigated, Vitamin B, Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Vitamin E, Multivitamins, Fish oil, Calcium, Omega 3, Saw palmetto, Zinc, Sildenafil, Flax seed, Folic acid, Garlic pills, Ginger pills, Ginko, Ginseng, Glucosamine, Iron, and Magnesium. Out of these supplements, only multivitamins and iron were found to significantly favor periodontal health, while folic acid and vitamin E significantly favored periodontitis. CONCLUSIONS: This study found a minimal association between the consumption of dietary supplements with periodontal health.

Three-dimensional ultrasound imaging of the jawbone for ridge width determination: A pre-clinical ex-vivo porcine study.

OBJECTIVE: Two-dimensional (2D) ultrasound can conveniently evaluate focal regions of interest intraorally. When a larger field of view to spatially reference remote anatomical structures is needed, 3D ultrasound (US) is desirable but not currently available. The aim of this study was to demonstrate the feasibility of constructing 3D US jawbone for ridge width determination. METHODS: Seven porcine hemi-mandibles with the overlying soft tissues secured by a holding frame with fiducial markers were US scanned on the facial and lingual sides separately.  The facial and lingual volumes were combined into a single volume, which was registered with the matched cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) scan.  On 8 to 11 cross-sections, 4 measurements of the facio-lingual ridge width at 3, 6, 9 and 12 mm from the bone crest were performed by two calibrated examiners.  A mixed model was used to estimate the differences between US and CBCT readings. RESULTS: Inter-examiner correlation was 0.978 and 0.987 for US and CBCT measurements, respectively. The ICCs between the US and CBCT was between 0.890 and 0.988 at the defined sites. The estimated mean differences ranged from -0.38 ± 0.69 (95% CI: -0.66 to -0.11) mm to 0.07 ± 0.93 (95% CI: -0.23 to 0.38) mm. The normalized root mean square deviation ranged between 4.50% and 7.89% for all levels except the 3 mm level, which ranged between 5.51% (in molars) and 11.16% (in premolars). CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates the feasibility of generating US jawbone in 3D for ridge width measurements. CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE: Commonly applied 2D ultrasound images are limited by a small field of view and an unknown coordinate system due to the nature of free hand scans. Novel 3D ultrasound acquisition enables referencing anatomical structures in a larger field of view and could become a promising tool to supplement CBCT.