Safety Assessment of the Modified Lactoperoxidase System-In Vitro Studies on Human Gingival Fibroblasts.

One strategy in caries prevention is to inhibit the formation of cariogenic biofilms. Attempts are being made to develop oral hygiene products enriched with various antimicrobial agents. One of them is lactoperoxidase-an enzyme that can oxidise (pseudo)halide ions to reactive products with antimicrobial activity. Currently, commercially available products utilise thiocyanate as a substrate; however, several alternatives that are oxidised to products with greater antimicrobial potential have been found. In this study, toxicity against human gingival fibroblasts of the lactoperoxidase system was evaluated using four different (pseudo)halide substrate systems-thiocyanate, iodide, selenocyanate, and a mixture of thiocyanate and iodide. For this purpose, cells were treated with the systems and then apoptosis, cell cycle, intracellular glutathione concentration, and mitochondrial superoxide production were assessed. The results showed that each system, after generating 250 µM of the product, inhibited cell divisions, increased apoptosis, and increased the percentage of dead cells. It was concluded that the mechanism of the observed phenomena was not related to increased superoxide production or the depletion of glutathione concentration. These findings emphasised the need for the further in vitro and in vivo toxicity investigation of the modified lactoperoxidase system to assess its safety and the possibility of use in oral hygiene products.

The role of economic development for the effect of oil market shocks on oil-exporting countries. Evidence from the interacted panel VAR model

This paper examines whether the effects of oil market shocks on economic activity and exchange rates in oil-exporting countries depend on the stage of economic development or the scale of oil exports. Within the framework of block-exogenous Interacted Panel Vector Autoregression (IPVAR), we show that both oil price and oil price uncertainty shocks affect the economies of oil-exporting countries. The responses of domestic variables to oil market shocks are heterogeneous across countries and the scale of these responses depend on the level of economic development. In general, the reaction of emerging market economies is more prominent than that of advanced economies. The combined contribution of oil market shocks to exchange rate volatility is inversely associated with the stage of economic development, but no such relation is observed for industrial production. The results obtained are robust to conditioning the responses on the scale of oil exports, restricting the sample to the non-covid pandemic period, and using the alternative measure for oil price uncertainty.