Host Modulation and the Inflammatory Response

By Carleigh Fraley, BA, RDH, Jennifer Knox-Rodriguez, BS, RDH and Diana Macri, RDH, BSDH, MSEd

Periodontal diseases are related to an immunoinflammatory response to various types of oral biofilm. They affect approximately 42% of United States adults.¹ Chronic periodontitis is characterized by alveolar bone loss, attachment loss, and apical migration of the junctional epithelium. Periodontal diseases result from dysbiosis: an imbalance between different organisms present in the natural microbiota of the subgingival microenvironment. Periodontal destruction can be attributed to the interaction of two main players: periodontally pathogenic biofilm and the host-mediated immunoinflammatory response to that biofilm.¹ Current treatment guidelines for periodontitis include the physical removal of plaque biofilm and calculus by scaling and root planing.² While this treatment aims to eliminate the bacterial insult, scaling and root planing does not address the host response element of periodontal diseases.³

* References can be found in the original article via the link below.
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