Effect of Pharmacological Methods in Accelerated Orthodontics: A Literature Review

This study aimed to perform a literature review on the effect of pharmacological methods in accelerated orthodontics and the evidence of published studies.

A search of the reported literature till December, 2020, was conducted using “PubMed,” “Google Scholar,” and “manual search.” The MesH terms and keywords in the search criteria were “tooth movement,” “orthodontics,” “pharmacological,” and “drugs” in various combinations. The search was confined to the English language. Data extraction was done under the heading authors, country and year, study design (level of evidence), study type, and pharmacological agents. The level of evidence of included studies was in accordance with the National Health and Medical Research Council.

Five hundred forty-seven studies were retrieved from different databases, and 12 were included in this review. Out of 12 included studies, 10 were animal studies, and two were human trials. Pharmacological agents utilized for intervention were prostaglandin, followed by relaxin, vitamin D, and parathyroid hormone. The level of evidence in the human study was reported as level II, and for animal studies, level III; all the included studies recorded accelerated tooth movement. The risk of bias in the included animal studies was unclear, and the risk was low and moderate for human studies.

Prostaglandin, interleukins, parathyroid hormone, and vitamin D are commonly used in published literature for accelerating tooth movement. Nonetheless, all these experimented drugs have few or other unsolicited adverse effects. Further studies with long-term follow-ups are recommended to support the utilization of pharmacological methods in accelerated orthodontic movements.