Dental Caries and Salivary Oxidative Stress: Global Scientific Research Landscape

Abstract

This study aimed to analyze the research trends on salivary oxidative stress associated with dental caries and to perform bibliometric approaches for existing publications on this association. A search was performed using the Web of Science Core Collection, without any restriction of language or publication year. The number of periodicals with the most published articles in this theme, most published authors and keywords were mapped; other metrics were also evaluated such as the countries that have more research on the subject and the period in which there were more publications on the subject. During the knowledge mapping, the most frequent experimental designs were analyzed, type of saliva collection, stage of caries disease, evaluated oxidative parameters were retrieved and analyzed from each manuscript. Between the 43 selected articles, the Journal of Clinical Pediatric Dentistry was the periodical appearing the most with 4 published articles. The authors who published the most were Celec, P., Tothova, L., Hegde, A.M., Shetty, S., Antoniali, C., and Pessan, JP with three articles each, and a total of 180 keywords representing the evolution of the theme. India and Asia were found to be the country and continent with most publications, respectively. Most articles collected non-stimulated total saliva, with total antioxidant capacity being the parameter most often evaluated. The type of study that appeared the most was cross-sectional studies, and articles published in the period of 2017-2022 were the most frequent. Studies show that dental caries can be associated to the changes in salivary oxidative biochemistry with an increase in lipid peroxidation, a biomarker of oxidative damage, and an increase in antioxidant capacity in chronic caries, in response to cariogenic challenge. Some studies evidence the reduction of lipid peroxidation after treatment of the carious lesion. Our findings reveal worldwide research trends, as well as a clearer knowledge of the evolution and future scenarios of this issue, also showing the mechanisms associating dental caries with changes in salivary oxidative biochemical parameters are not clear.

Keywords: dental caries; oxidative stress; saliva.

Figure 1

Flowchart of the search and article selection.

Figure 2

Journals that published at least two articles on dental caries and salivary oxidative stress.

Figure 3

Co-authorship overlay visualization of the 43 articles showing the collaboration of the authors of the selected articles about the relation of dental caries and salivary oxidative stress. The total of 164 author form 30 clusters. The overlay visualization, the lines connecting authors the size of node denote number of articles (a) and number of citations (b), respectively.

Figure 4

Network of co-occurrence of all keywords (author and keyword plus). The 180 keywords form 14 clusters. The size of the node represents the frequency of the keyword, with larger nodes indicating higher frequency.

Figure 5

Geographical distribution of the selected articles.