Objective: The aim of the study is to investigate the efficacy of cell-based therapy in the surgical treatment of periodontal intrabony defects.
Materials and methods: PRISMA guidelines were followed, and the study protocol was regis-tered in PROSPERO. Electronic and hand searches were carried out on electronic databases and major international journals of periodontology. All randomized clinical trials (RCTs) comparing cell-based therapies com-bined with surgery to surgery alone for the treatment of periodontal intrabony defects were considered. Quality assessment was performed using the Cochrane Risk of Bias Tool for randomized clinical trials (RoB 2). Quantitative evaluation of data was performed by meta-analysis.
Results: Five hundred twenty-eight records were initially screened and 5 RCTs fulfilling the eligibility criteria were included. Periodontal ligament stem cells, dental pulp stem cells, periosteum-derived stem cells, gingival fibroblasts and their associated stem cells were used in combination with different surgical techniques to treat intrabony periodontal defects. Meta-analysis showed a statistically signif-icant effect in favor of cell-based groups for clinical attachment level gain (p=0.004), with a difference in means of 1.7 mm (95% CI 0.5; 2.9). This was replicated for intrabony defect depth reduction (p=0.006), with a difference in means of 1.3 (95% CI 0.4; 2.3).
Conclusions: Cell-based therapies have been positively applied for the surgical treatment of intrabony periodontal defects with promising results. However, the results obtained should be interpreted with caution due to the low number of available RCTs, the study design heterogeneity, and the limited extension of the follow-up.