Ancient dental pulp: Masterpiece tissue for paleomicrobiology

Abstract

Introduction: Dental pulp with special structure has become a good reference sample in paleomicrobiology-related blood-borne diseases, many pathogens were detected by different methods based on the diagnosis of nucleic acids and proteins. Objectives: This review aims to propose the preparation process from ancient teeth collection to organic molecule extraction of dental pulp and summary, analyze the methods that have been applied to detect septicemic pathogens through ancient dental pulps during the past 20 years following the first detection of an ancient microbe. Methods: The papers used in this review with two main objectives were obtained from PubMed and Google scholar with Results: The analysis of ancient dental pulp should have a careful preparation process with many different steps to give highly accurate results, each step complies with the rules in archaeology and paleomicrobiology. After the collection of organic molecules from dental pulp, they were investigated for pathogen identification based on the analysis of DNA and protein. Actually, DNA approach takes a principal role in diagnosis while the protein approach is more and more used. A total of seven techniques was used and ten bacteria (Yersinia pestis, Bartonella quintana, Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi, Salmonella enterica serovar Paratyphi C, Mycobacterium leprae, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Rickettsia prowazeki, Staphylococcus aureus, Borrelia recurrentis, Bartonella henselae) and one virus (Anelloviridae) were identified. Y. pestis had the most published in quantity and all methods were investigated for this pathogen, S. aureus and B. recurrentis were identified by three different methods and others only by one. The combining methods interestingly increase the positive rate with ELISA, PCR and iPCR in Yersinia pestis diagnosis. Twenty-seven ancient genomes of Y. pestis and one ancient genome of B. recurrentis were reconstructed.Comparing to the ancient bone, ancient teeth showed more advantage in septicemic diagnosis. Beside pathogen identification, ancient pulp help to distinguish species.

Five millennia of Bartonella quintana bacteraemia

“…The results reported here were authenticated by the fact that we chose ancient teeth, preferentially monoradicular teeth with a close apex, no traumatic lesions, and an absence of dental caries that helped minimise any risk of external contamination [ 16 ]. A positive control was not used in the PCR experiments because it could be a source of contamination; the negative controls remained negative [ 18 ].…”

“…Following our current protocol for selecting and handling teeth, teeth were washed with sterile water and gradually dried, and the dental pulp was extracted using rotating disk instruments [ 16 ]. Total DNA was extracted using the phenol-chloroform protocol [ 17 ].…”

Antibiofilm and immunomodulatory resorbable nanofibrous filing for dental pulp regenerative procedures

“…PVA/CS nanofibers with different ciprofloxacin or IDR-1002 proportions were tested against planktonic S. aureus and E. faecalis . S. aureus is involved with pulp inflammation [ 45 ], and E. faecalis is a persistent microorganism found in most endodontic infections [ 46 ]. It was noticed that nanofibers incorporating 0.5% or 1% by weight ciprofloxacin had bactericidal activity against S. aureus and E. faecalis ( Table 1 ).…”

Cone-Beam Computed Tomography Image Features under Intelligent Three-Dimensional Reconstruction Algorithm in the Evaluation of Intraoperative and Postoperative Curative Effect of Dental Pulp Disease Using Root Canal Therapy

“…is allows orthodontists and researchers in this field to overcome the huge limitations of two-dimensional radiographs, including magnification, geometric distortion, superimposed structures, and inconsistent head positions. In the early stages of merging CBCT for orthodontic purposes, there was a tendency to fold the three-dimensional data sets into three-dimensional images, because analyzing images in this way was the only known professional method to assess the relationship between dentistry and bone structure [19,20]. Currently, CBCT can be used to analyze the three-dimensional craniofacial anatomy and treatment changes.…”