Objectives: This study aimed to: (i) evaluate the effects of Malaysian Trigona honey on bacterial structure and (ii) assess the anti-virulence potential of this honey by examining their impacts on the expression of selected genes (involved in stress survival and biofilm formation) in a test organism.
Materials and Methods: Trigona honey's impacts on the bacterial structure (cell morphology) and the expression profiles of select Pseudomonas Aeruginosa and Streptococcus Pyogenes genes were examined using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and real-time PCR (RT-qPCR) analysis, respectively.
Results: SEM showed that the decreased cell density deformed, disrupted, and damaged cells for both bacteria. RT-qPCR showed that the expression of fleN, fleQ, and fleR genes of P.aeruginosa were decreased, 4.26-fold, 3.80-fold and 2.66- fold respectively. In addition, scpA, ftsY, and emm13 of S.pyogenes were decreased, 2.87-fold, 3.24-fold, and 4.65-fold respectively.
Conclusion: Our results indicate that Trigona honey may be an effective inhibitor and virulence modulator of P. aeruginosa and S. pyogenes via multiple molecular targets. This deduction needs to be investigated in vivo.
METHODS: This article was divided into the following parts: Part 1 Surface roughness and substance loss: an in vitro study, which involves intact extracted teeth sectioned and treated using a piezoelectric ultrasonic device (PM200 EMS Piezon, Switzerland) with a conventional scaler tip (FS-407) and a Perio Slim (PS) scaler tip (Perio Slim DS-016A). All sectioned samples for tooth surface roughness (n = 20) and tooth substance loss (n = 46) analyses were measured and compared using a 3D surface texture analyser and scanning electron microscope (SEM) respectively, at baseline and following scaling. Part 2 Pain Perception: a clinical study, which was a split mouth study design including 30 participants with gingivitis and/or mild chronic periodontitis; treated with supra-gingival scaling from teeth #13 to #23. Subjects were randomised to group A or group B. Group A was treated first with PS scaler tips, whereas group B was treated first with conventional scaler tips. Pain perception was recorded using the visual analogue scale (VAS).
RESULTS: In vitro study: both scaler tips caused significant reduction in root substance roughness after scaling (p 0.05) was observed. The PS scaler tip caused statistically significantly less root substance loss (p