Abstract
Special care must be taken in the orthodontic treatment of patients who are medicating with phenytoin, which has a side effect of gingival overgrowth. However, the mechanism of this side effect is not yet known in detail.Gingival overgrowth is termed hatred by inflammation, and it has been reported that when inflammation occurs during phenytoin treatment the movement of the teeth is delayed. Therefore, in the present study, it was decided to investigate the mechanisms of phenytoin by focusing on matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) that are expressed as a result of inflammation.In this study, we demonstrated that the production of MMP-3 in TNF-α-stimulated Human gingival fibroblasts (HGFs) is suppressed by phenytoin. In addition, phenytoin suppressed the phosphorylation of NFκB in TNF-α stimulated HGFs. These results suggested that phenytoin stimulation regulated the production of MMP-3 in inflammatory HGFs, and that phenythoin stimulation involves NFκB signaling.
