Our gums' own cells produce the substances that lead to the degeneration of the jawbone. This is one of the findings in a dissertation that Py Palmqvist defended at Umea University in Sweden recently.
The findings are important to our understanding of how inflammation leads to loosening of the teeth, arthritic rheumatism, and prostheses detaching from the body.
The dissertation shows that certain signal substances in the body, so-called cytokines, have the ability to stimulate the cells in bones to degenerate and that these cytokines are produced not only by white blood corpuscles but also by cells in the gums, so-called gum fibroblasts. The production of the cytokine interleukin-6 and its closest relatives, interleukin-11 and leukemia inhibitory factor, is stimulated by certain inflammatory cytokines and is inhibited by other anti-inflammatory cytokines from white blood corpuscles. The findings are important to our understanding of the interplay between local cells in the gums and white blood corpuscles immigrating from the blood that regulates the degradation of bone in diseases involving loosening of the teeth.