Introduction:

Periodontitis is an inflammatory disease that affects the supporting tissues of teeth, the effects of excess of nitric oxide, may contribute to the symptoms of periodontitis.

Objective:

To determine the serum nitric oxide concentration in generalized chronic and aggressive periodontitis patients and to compare it with a healthy subject group from the Mexican population.

Materials and methods:

A case and control study was performed. Sixty-nine individuals were recruited from the Clínica de Posgrado de Periodoncia of the Centro Universitario de Ciencias de la Salud, Universidad de Guadalajara, México. Patients with clinical features of generalized chronic periodontitis (GCP group, n=19), generalized aggressive periodontitis (GAP group, n=11), and a group of healthy subjects (HS group, n=39) were included in the study. Informed consent was obtained from each subject, and serum nitric oxide concentration was measured by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay.

Results:

Nitric oxide concentration in the study groups was greater in the GCP group (462.57 ± 16.57 µmol/L) than in the GAP group (433.84 ± 18.61 µmol/L) and the HS group (422.46 ± 12.07 µmol/L). A comparison using Student’s t-test (one-tailed) between healthy subjects and generalized chronic periodontitis showed borderline significance (p<0.04), whereas no significant differences were observed in HS and GAP groups, with a p-value of 0.64, and the GAP vs. GCP p-value was 0.33.

Conclusion:

The serum nitric oxide concentration observed in the present study suggests that nitric oxide plays a major role in the inflammatory process, which cannot necessarily be linked to the severity of the disease and periodontal tissue destruction.

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