Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the preventive effect of medicinal herbal extract (MHE) and gelatin sponge on alveolar osteitis (AO) in an experimental rat model.
Design: Twenty-one Sprague-Dawley male rats with a mean age of 12 weeks were used. After extraction of the maxillary right first molar, an AO model was created for each animal. The animals were randomly separated to three equal groups. Group I served as a control, Group II was subjected to an intra-alveolar MHE application, and gelatin sponge was left in the sockets of Group III. On the 7th post-extraction day, the animals were sacrificed. The specimens were analyzed by micro-computed tomography (micro-CT), histopathologically and immunohistochemically.
Results: Macroscopic evaluation revealed mild to intense signs of AO in all groups, but the difference was not significant (p < 0.05). Micro-CT analysis showed that bone formation was the highest in Group III (bone volume/total volume; 10.63 ± 4.9 %), whereas bone mineral density was the highest in Group I (2.05 ± 0.2 g/cm3). The difference was not significant (p > 0.05). In Group III, only 16.7 % of specimens showed no signal of inflammatory response (p < 0.01). The difference was not significant between the positive labeling for receptor activator of nuclear kappa-β (RANK), receptor activator of nuclear kappa-β ligand (RANKL), osteoprotegerin and osteopontin, but the intensity of Groups II and III was higher than the Group I for osteopontin (p < 0.01).
Conclusions: MHE and gelatin sponge were not effective enough to prevent alveolar osteitis, but positive results were obtained in bone healing.
Keywords: Alveolar osteitis; Ankaferd blood stopper; Bone healing; Gelatin sponge; Hemostatic agent; Medicinal herbal extract.
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