Bone morphogenetic proteins: periodontal regeneration

Periodontitis is an infectious inflammatory disease that results in attachment loss and bone loss. Regeneration of the periodontal tissues entails de novo formation of cementum, periodontal ligament, and alveolar bone. Several different approaches are currently being explored to achieve complete, reliable, and reproducible regeneration of periodontal tissues. The therapeutic management of new bone formation is one of the key issues in successful periodontal regeneration. Bone morphogenetic proteins form a unique group of proteins within the transforming growth factor superfamily of genes and have a vital role in the regulation in the bone induction and maintenance. The activity of bone morphogenetic proteins was first identified in the 1960s, but the proteins responsible for bone induction were unknown until the purification and cloning of human bone morphogenetic proteins in the 1980s, because of their osteoinductive potential. Bone morphogenetic proteins have gained a lot of interest as therapeutic agents for treating periodontal defects. A systematic search for data related to the use of bone morphogenetic proteins for the regeneration of periodontal defects was performed to recognize studies on animals and human (PUBMED, MEDLINE, COCHRANE, and Google search). All the studies included showed noticeable regeneration of periodontal tissues with the use of BMP.