Getting to the root of periodontitis

Current periodontitis therapies do not target the underlying immune response that drives the disease. A team from the U.S. and Brazil is looking to change that and has shown that microparticles loaded with chemokine CC motif ligand 22 recruited T_reg cells to the gingiva and slowed periodontitis progression in mice and dogs.¹

Future studies will need to determine whether the microparticle-based therapy can help treat patients with more advanced disease who already have substantial loss of tooth-supporting alveolar bone...