Alveolar bone changes in experimentally induced prediabetes and diabetes.

Alveolar bone resorption could be the result of local and systemic nocive factors. Diabetes mellitus is considered to be one of the conditions capable of inducing this resorption. Using rat models diagnosed as diabetics and prediabetics, alveolar bone resorption was measured directly on the jaws. Significant differences were found between the diabetic and prediabetic rats when compared with the controls. Our results confirmed that significant alveolar bone resorption occurs in animals with only a genetic predisposition to develop diabetes. Bone loss in prediabetic and diabetic rats is a noninflammatory atrophic degeneration that requires further investigation.