Subgingival Delivery of Bifidobacterium Gel versus Tetracycline Gel as an Adjunct to Scaling and Root Planing-A Randomized Controlled Trial

Background: Periodontitis is a common chronic inflammatory condition in adult population affecting both the hard and soft tissues surrounding the teeth. Bacteriotherapy is an alternative way to suppress infections by using probiotic bacteria which have antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory effect to destroy pathogenic microorganisms. Till date many studies have been done to check the efficacy of probiotics delivered systemically and a very few as local drug delivery. Therefore, the present study was designed to clinically and microbiologically evaluate the efficacy of local drug delivery of Bifidobacterium animalis subsp lactis 2*10(9) CFU/g gel as an adjunct to conventional mechanical periodontal therapy in comparison with tetracycline gel in stage II, III periodontitis patients. Materials and Methods: 45 systemically healthy Stage II, III periodontitis patients were selected and randomly allocated into 3 groups. All the groups received scaling and root planing, Group 2 and Group 3 received local drug delivery of probiotic and tetracycline gel respectively. Clinical and microbiological evaluations were done at baseline, 1 month and 3 months following the treatment in all the groups. Microbiological analysis was carried out by RT PCR. Results: At 3 months evaluation, all the clinical and microbiological parameters showed significant improvement in all the groups. On inter group analysis statistically significant improvement was seen in Group 2 and Group 3 when compared to Group 1. Group 2 and Group 3 showed no statistically significant difference. Conclusion: Local drug delivery of Bifidobacterium gel can be a useful adjuvant to scaling and root planing in periodontitis patients. Further long-term studies are required to evaluate the action of probiotics in periodontitis.