Abstract
The statin family of drugs are safe and effective therapeutic agents for the treatment of arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease (CVD). Due to a wide range of health benefits in addition to their cholesterol lowering properties, statins have recently attracted significant attention as a new treatment strategy for several conditions, which are not directly related to normalizing a lipid profile and preventing CVD. Statins exert a variety of beneficial effects on different aspects of oral health, which includes their positive effects on bone metabolism, their anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties, and their potential effects on epithelization and wound healing. Additionally, they possess antimicrobial, antiviral, and fungicidal properties, which makes this class of drugs attractive to the field of periodontal diseases and oral and dental health. However, to the best of our knowledge, there has been no comprehensive study to date, which has investigated the effects of statin drugs on different aspects of dental and oral health. Therefore, the primary objective of this paper was to review the effect of statins on dental and oral health. Results of our extensive review have indicated that statins possess remarkable and promising effects on several aspects of dental and oral health including chronic periodontitis, alveolar bone loss due to either extraction or chronic periodontitis, osseointegration of implants, dental pulp cells, orthodontic tooth movement, and orthodontic relapse, tissue healing (wound/bone healing), salivary gland function, and finally, anti-cancer effects. Hence, statins can be considered as novel, safe, inexpensive, and widely-accessible therapeutic agents to improve different aspects of dental and oral health.
Highlights
The burden of oral diseases such as dental caries, periodontal diseases, tooth loss, lesions of the oral mucosa including those resulting from trauma, oropharyngeal cancers, and oral disease associated with human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS), is very high in both developing and developed countries and is considered a major public health concern globally [1–3]
The protective benefits of SMV were thought to be due to scavenging of radiation-induced free radicals, minimizing collagen deposition, and reducing/delaying the elevation of transforming growth factor β1 expression, which is induced by radiation
One study assessed the effect of simvastatin in combination with microRNA-21 inhibitor in lung metastatic salivary adenoid cystic carcinoma (SACC-LM) cells
Summary
The burden of oral diseases such as dental caries, periodontal diseases, tooth loss, lesions of the oral mucosa including those resulting from trauma, oropharyngeal cancers, and oral disease associated with human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS), is very high in both developing and developed countries and is considered a major public health concern globally [1–3] The statin family of drugs represent safe and effective therapeutic agents to reduce cholesterol biosynthesis in the liver and reduction of the levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), which are causally associated with arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease [14–20]. Beyond their potent lipid-lowering effect, which reduces both cardiovascular risk and mortality, it is reported that statins have several promising effects on human health. As it pertains to various oral cancers, statins can inhibit the growth, invasion, metastasis, cellular proliferation and differentiation, and cell cycle regulation of tumor cells [37, 38]
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