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Introduction: Endodontic treatment of teeth with periapical lesions presents more clinical difficulty. Various lasers in several methods are used in endodontics, and most of them are utilized as an adjunctive protocol in order to reduce the bacterial load of the root canal system. Improved disinfection plays a crucial role in enhanced and accelerated healing of periapical lesions. This review aims to summarize studies assessing the effect of lasers on periapical lesion healing. Methods: PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus, Embase, and Web of Science (ISI) online databases were searched, with no publication year or status restriction, for relevant articles on April 2023. Clinical studies evaluating the effect of laser application on the periapical lesion of patients using radiographic assessment were considered eligible for inclusion. Results: Eight studies were included after carefully screening the obtained articles, first by their title and abstract and then by their full texts. Diode (4), Er, Cr: YSGG (3), and Nd: YAG (1) lasers were used with output powers that varied from 0.75 to 2 watts. Photodynamic therapy was employed in two studies, and in other studies, the root canal system was directly irradiated. Irradiation of the root canal system was adjunctive to standard preparation in all studies. The healing of the teeth treated with lasers was not inferior to those conventionally treated. In all of the included studies, laser application outperformed the standard cleaning and shaping protocol; however, this improved or faster healing was not statistically significant in most studies. Conclusion: Lasers might expedite and improve the healing process of periapical lesions. Since lasers enhance the quality of cleaning of the root canal system, it is hard to point out the exact mechanism of it. Further investigations are needed to realize the effectiveness of this treatment modality and to discover the underlying biological concepts.
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Introduction: A sialolith is a salivary stone usually presenting with swelling and pain in the affected salivary gland, most commonly the submandibular gland. There have been speculations about the association between this condition and other systemic diseases, especially those forming stones, such as nephrolithiasis and cholelithiasis. This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to summarize the studies assessing the relationship between cholelithiasis and sialolithiasis. Methods: PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus, Web of Science, and Embase electronic databases were searched according to the keywords related to both disorders without any publication date or language restriction. Case-control and cohort studies evaluating the relationship between salivary and biliary stones were considered eligible. Quality assessment was performed following Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS) for quality assessment of case-control studies. All meta and statistical analyses were performed with Comprehensive Meta-Analysis software. Results: Two studies fully complied with the defined eligibility criteria and were included, both of which were case-control studies using national-scale databases. In both surveys, the prevalence of previous gallstones in patients with sialolithiasis was compared to that of a control group. Though one of the studies found that there is no relationship between sialolithiasis and cholelithiasis, the meta-analysis revealed that previous cholelithiasis is significantly more prevalent among patients with sialolithiasis (P = 0.000), with an odds ratio of 2.04. Conclusion: It seems that cholelithiasis is significantly associated with an increase in salivary stone formation. Therefore, a thorough salivary examination in all patients declaring current or past cholelithiasis is recommended. However, more studies, especially prospective cohorts, are needed to make firmer conclusions.
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Neuropathic pain (NP) is a kind of chronic pain caused by direct injury to the peripheral or central nervous system (CNS). microRNAs (miRNAs) are small noncoding RNAs that mostly interact with the 3 untranslated region of messenger RNAs (mRNAs) to regulate the expression of multiple genes. NP is characterized by changes in the expression of receptors and mediators, and there is evidence that miRNAs may contribute to some of these alterations. In this review, we aimed to fully comprehend the connection between NP and miRNA; and also, to establish a link between neurology, biology, and dentistry. Studies have shown that targeting miRNAs may be an effective therapeutic strategy for the treatment of chronic pain and potential target for the prevention of NP.