Metabolomic and Proteomic Fingerprinting in Peri-implant Diseases

Due to the limited efficacy of its treatment modalities, there is a stringent need to improve the prevention and early diagnosis of peri-implantitis. In fact, to date clinical and radiographic tools are not able to discern which patients are going to develop peri-implantitis and, among the ones already with peri-implantitis, which ones are currently loosing bone and which ones are going to progress.

This project aims to analyze for the first time the whole large scale proteome and metabolome of peri-implant crevicular fluid (PICF) with an integrated approach from implants with peri-implant diseases.

Twenty-five patients with at least one implant with peri-implant mucositis and one implant with peri-implantitis will be selected. For each of the selected participants, the PICF from an implant with peri-implant mucositis and from an implant with peri-implantitis will be sampled two different times before treatment. One year after the corresponding treatment is provided, the PICF of the treated implants with peri-implantitis will be sampled again.

Both proteomic and metabolomic profiling of the samples will be carried out. The most important strength of this project will be the ability to evaluate together the whole proteome and the whole metabolome and to integrate them in the same framework.