The clinical periodontal findings in persons in stages of puberty and determining CD4+, CD8+, CD16++56+ T cell level in the samples of gingival tissue and investigating their relationships with clinical parameters

IV SUMMARY There is a balance, in health, between pathogen organisms and the host defense system; when there is an imbalance in favor of the virulence factors, disease may occur. Bacterial plaque that is colonized in the supragingival and subgingival region and its metabolic productions may become active in humoral or cellular immune systems. Although the humoral immune response basically includes antibody production against bacterial plaque, cellular immune response refers to a cell population exist in the gingival lesion. The aim of this study was to investigate the presence of the ratio of CD4+,CD8+ and CD16++56+ lymphocytes at the local level with the intention of determining immunoregulation mechanisms that are effective in patients with puberty gingivitis. In addition, it was to determine whether there was change in T-lymphocyte subsets in patients with pubertal gingivitis after the application of conventional treatment methods. The investigation was carried out on 40 adolescents subjects ( 20 subjects with pubertal gingivitis, 20 subjects with healthy). The biopsy samples were taken from the gingival tissues at the region of gingivitis. Then, CD4+,CD8* and CD16++56+ lymphocytes are CD47CD8* ratio values were determined using flow cytometry in the biopsy samples. At the same time, gingival index (Löe-Silness) and plaque index (Silness- Löe) scores were recorded to assess the periodontal status in subjects. To determine the differences between the clinical measurements and the laboratory results obtained before the treatment, after conventional treatment, we performed paried t-test and student t test. The CD4+,CD8+ and CD16++56+ lymphocyte values in the patients with pubertal gingivitis were found to be 23.50±4.86 %, 13,81±3,6 and 12.63±2.78 %, respectively. The values are lower than the control group. The CD4+ lymphocyte value increased to 27,50±4,15 % conventional treatment. A similar findings was found for CD8+ lymphocyte value. The CD8+ lymphocyte value increased to 17,63±2,42 % with conventional treatment. However, the CD4+/CD8+ ratio decreased after conventional treatment. This decrease was statistically significant (p<.05). After conventional treatment, there was decrease in clinical indexes, which was statistically significant (p<.001). Consequently, these findings suggested that CD4+, CD8+ lymphocytes could play a significant role in pubertal gingivitis pathobiology.