Gingival Crevicular Fluid from Smoking and Non-Smoking Chronic Periodontitis Patients

Objectives: Smoking is a major risk factor for the development and progression of chronic periodontitis (CP). Gingival crevicular fluid (GCF) derived from these patients contains many proteins that could serve as important diagnostic indicators. A protein chip technology called Surface Enhanced Laser Desorption/Ionization-Time of Flight-mass spectrometry (SELDI-TOF-MS) has recently been developed to facilitate protein profiling of complex biological mixtures. Methods: GCF samples collected before treatment from 10 CP patients (5 smokers and 5 non-smokers) at both shallow and deep sites were evaluated by SELDI-TOF-MS. Spectral fingerprints were constructed for both cohorts and analyzed by a 2-way ANOVA according to smoking status and pocket depth. Significance threshold was set at p<0.05. Also, mean molecular weight (MW) peaks and intensities were compared between the two cohorts. Results: The spectral fingerprints were significantly different between the two cohorts when analyzed according to smoking status (p<0.0001) but not pocket depth (p=0.9876) by ANOVA. Also, the mean intensity of five individual MW peaks were determined to be significantly different between the two cohorts. For example, the MW peak at 2920 was found to be 2.5-fold higher in the GCF profile of smokers compared to non-smokers. In addition, seven peaks of MW from 10-14 kDa were only detected in the GCF obtained from smokers. Conclusions: This study has demonstrated that profiling of GCF by SELDI-TOF-MS can distinguish between CP smokers and non-smokers. Moreover, over-expressed proteins in GCF from smokers may serve as biomarkers for this high risk patient population. This grant was supported by NIDCR DE07258 and a UTHSC-College of Dentistry grant.