Previous studies on honey have shown its potential as an alternative approach in optimizing medical resources for periodontal treatment. However, to date, there has been no study published on the effects of honey on human periodontal ligament fibroblasts (HPDLFs). The aimed of this study was to investigate the effect of Tualang honey on HPDLF proliferation and alkaline phosphatase (ALP) level with an intention to establish honey as one of the natural products which may promote healing and regeneration of periodontium. The HPDLFs were cultured and treated with honey at four different concentrations (0.02, 0.3, 1 and 5%) in a 96-well plate and incubated at 37°C with 5% CO2. Proliferation test (MTT test) was assessed up to day 3 whereas ALP level (ALP assay) was assessed up to day 7. The αMEM supplemented with 10% FBS and 1% penicillin streptomycin was used as control. The results for MTT showed that the cell proliferation for 0.02% honey concentration was significantly higher (p<0.05) on day 3 whereas the proliferation were decreased for 1% honey and 5% honey concentration (p<0.05) than control on all the 3 days. There was increased in ALP level in a similar pattern for all concentration groups from day 0 to day 7 without any significant difference compared with control. Therefore, the present data suggests that Tualang honey stimulated HPDLF proliferation at low concentrations and has an inhibitory effect at high concentrations. However, its role in osteoblastic differentiation requires further investigation.
Human salivary exosomes have been identified as a highly informative nanovesicle with clinical-relevant information for variation of diagnostic purposes. As a continued effort from previous studies on human salivary exosomes effect at gene expression level, this study is carried out to observe the morphology of human periodontal fibroblast (HPdLF) treated with exosomes cells under the same period of changes in genotypic level occurred. In vitro, HPdLF cells were cultured for 24 hours with 10 μg/ml of human salivary exosomes. The morphology of HPdLF cells was examined under inverted light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) for both control samples and samples treated with human salivary exosomes, while the cell count was performed via trypan blue staining. There was no significant difference in the morphology under the inverted light microscopy and the cell number of HPdLF cells for both treated and untreated cells with exosomes. However, for SEM, the treated HPdLF with salivary exosomes showed slight observable changes on the filopodia, lamellipodia, cytoplasmic vesicles and the cytoskeleton of the cells. Even within a short period (24 hours) of culturing time for cells with human salivary exosomes, the samples showed minimal changes which positively suggested a simultaneous event of exchanging materials from human salivary exosomes to cells had occurred, hence, potentially proving that human salivary exosomes can enhance cell proliferation.