ABSTRACT
Aim: Aim of this systematic review was to analyse the available scientific evidence on the effects of probiotics in prevention and treatment of periodontal diseases Materials and methods: A broad literature search was performed using both electronic database and hand search in library. The important databases like COCHRANE CENTRAL, MEDLINE, GOOGLE SCHOLAR, EMBASE were used for online data search. Hand search was performed in the central library of the institute to identify the relevant articles, articles that satisfied the inclusion criteria with description of randomized clinical trials comparing the administration of probiotics versus placebo or another intervention to prevent or treat periodontal diseases in adult patients were selected. Results: The initial search resulted in 73 articles; however, 45 of these articles were excluded after reviewing the abstracts because they did not have the proper clinical trial design or because they were duplicates. After analysing the full text from 27 clinical trials, 12 were excluded because they did not fulfil all the selection criteria. Our final review included 15 articles. Included outcome measures were probing pocket depth, bleeding on probing, clinical attachment loss, plaque index and gingival inflammation. Included studies were subjected to critical analysis following the Cochrane Collaboration tool for evaluating the risk of bias. Conclusion: Probiotics had a beneficial effect on reducing probing pocket depth, gingival inflammation, bleeding on probing when compared with placebo. Lactobacillus was the most commonly used probiotic genus, in which L.reuteri strain had most beneficial effects.