Title:The Gender Bender effect in Periodontal Immune Response
Volume: 16
Issue: 1
Author(s): Vishakha Grover, Ashish Jain, Anoop Kapoor, Ranjan Malhotra and Gurparkash Singh Chahal
Affiliation:
Keywords:
Aging, endocrine hormones, gender, immune cells, periodontal disease, sex steroids, systemic disease.
Abstract: Background: The gender and sex of an individual is known to have a significant bearing on
the immune system, responsible for protection against infections and disease. Contemporary evidence suggests there
exists a sexual dimorphism in the hetero immune as well as autoimmune responses in human beings and females show
stronger and more vigorous immune responses to antigenic stimulations, e.g infectious diseases and vaccination. The
evidence supportive to gender based heterogeneity in immune responses specifically in context of periodontal disease, is
mounting in contemporary literature.
Method: A thorough and methodical search for related scientific publications have been accomplished by using different
key words and terms like sex or gender based immune differences in periodontal disease, both by manual methods and on
various electronic databases. Primary research articles, narrative and systematic reviews of good quality, relevant to the
subject were included.
Results: The aggregate effects of the factors related to gender such as the steroid hormones as well as gene based
differences in both sexes as supported by published literature are in line with the observed variation in susceptibility for
chronic periodontitis in both genders , with males showing more risk for disease than women.
Conclusion: Gender as a risk factor for periodontal disease needs to identified, its underlying mechanisms to contribute
needs to be revealed, so that novel strategies for risk assessment, disease identification and individualized therapeutic
approaches can be developed for optimized patient care.