Clinical and microbiological efficacy of intra-pocket application of diode laser in grade C periodontitis: a randomized controlled clinical trial.

BACKGROUND: Periodontitis is a microbially induced disease destroying structures anchoring teeth to jaw bones. Although metronidazole in combination with spiramycin is the effective conventional treatment of stage III grade C periodontitis, it has several systemic side effects. Laser therapy is widely used nowadays as an adjunct to scaling and root planing (SRP) to modulate inflammatory host response and eradicate microbes, due to bactericidal and detoxifying effects. Since microbiological analysis is one of the diagnostic methods identifying periodontal risk; our research aimed to investigate the efficacy of intra-pocket application of diode laser (980 nm) versus antibiotic therapy in enhancing clinical and microbiological parameters in stage III grade C periodontitis. METHODS: A randomized controlled clinical trial was conducted on fifty patients with stage III grade C periodontitis, divided equally into two groups. We managed test group by SRP with intra-pocket application of diode laser (980 nm) and the control group by SRP with systemic antibiotic administration (spiramycin and metronidazole). Then, we measured periodontal pocket depth (PPD) and clinical attachment loss (CAL) for both groups, before treatment (baseline), four and twelve weeks after. Moreover, we collected gingival crevicular fluid from both groups at baseline, four and twelve weeks after treatment and analyzed by real-time polymerase chain reaction to detect the relative count of Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans and Porhyromonas gingivalis. RESULTS: Compared to baseline, all assessed clinical and microbiological parameters attested improvement at the end of the study period in each group individually with no significant difference between the two studied groups. Although, at twelve weeks, flare up of bacterial levels was detected with systemic antibiotic administration. CONCLUSION: Laser therapy can be considered as an effective treatment modality in stage III grade C periodontitis, avoiding the systemic antibiotic side effects and solving the recurrence problems due to bacterial resistance by long term usage. TRIAL REGISTRATION: NCT05222737 retrospectively on 03/02/2022, Clinicaltrial.gov.

Study of the gut Microbiome Profile in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: a Single Tertiary Hospital Experience.

The role of gut microbiome was recently raised in the pathogenesis of neurodevelopmental disorders including autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The aim of this study was to elucidate changes in gut microbiome in Egyptian autistic children and its possible correlation with the severity of autism and gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms. The gut bacterial microbiome of 41 ASD children, 45 siblings, and 45 healthy controls were analyzed using quantitative SYBR Green real-time PCR technique targeting 16S rRNA of selected bacteria. The gut microbiome of ASD children and their siblings contained a higher relative abundance of Bacteroides as well as Ruminococcus than controls. Prevotella/Bacteroides (P/B) ratio and Firmicutes/Bacteroidetes (F/B) were significantly lower in both ASD cases and their siblings. The only difference between the autistic cases and their siblings was the significantly higher level of Bifidobacterium in siblings, which appears to offer them a protective role. There was no correlation between the altered gut microbiome and the severity of autism or GI symptoms. The current study showed an evidence of changes in the gut microbiome of autistic children compared to the unrelated control. However, the microbiome profile of siblings was more like that of autistic children than that of unrelated controls indicating that gut microbiota is affected by dietary habits, living conditions together with host genetic factors.