Collaborative Research on Rapid Periodontitis Test

Periodontitis is a chronic inflammatory disease of the tissue around the teeth. The early detection of periodontitis before it manifests undesirable irreversible destruction of periodontal tissues has been an important issue in public dental health. The clinical examination is a traditional way of the diagnosis of periodontal diseases but is often insufficient and does not provide information on the current activity of periodontitis or its progression. After intensive clinical studies in the Department of Preventive and Social Dentistry at Seoul National University (SNU) in South Korea, the salivary matrix-metalloproteinase (MMP)-9 was identified as one of the major enzymes responsible for the initiation of periodontitis. SNU developed a point-of-care (POC) kit for a lateral flow test (LFT) using MMP-9 and created a diagnostic model based on a patient's personal information for screening periodontitis. After the successful clinical studies, the Rapid Periodontitis screening Tool (RPT), a database-driven web application, was developed to measure the risk of periodontitis online with the collaboration between the School of Dentistry at SNU and the Computer Science Program at Marshall University in the United States. The web interface in RPT allows anyone to enter their personal data and the value of LFT test results to receive the screening result immediately. The RPT also provides member pages to track down the test results in the long run. Once commercialized, the RPT will help early detection of periodontitis to enhance public health. This paper describes details of the tool and future research direction.