What is it about?
Going to the heart of the phenomenon of collagen fiber destruction and dettachment from cementum that ultimately defines periodontitis, we ask if the rate of the destructive disease progression follows rules or it is random, by just finding rules in a neighbourhood of nine cells where the central cell interacts with the surrounding eight cells.
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Why is it important?
The unique self-similar pattern of the human periodontal ligament guides periodontitis progression in such a manner, that for the majority of patients will preserve a functioning dentition (with reduced periodontal support) till the age of 80s. Let's not forget that therapeutic interventions were absent for thousands of thousands of years in the evolutionary course of the human race.
Perspectives
Complexity can only be realized through self-organization: that is to say that all involved parts are tighed up and locked together from one point of the system spread to all parts (like ripples from a pebble). The level of immune response sets the probabilities of being under certain rules for periodontitis progression. By modelling the disease we might better target therapeutically susceptible individuals.
Dr Georgios Papantonopoulos
University of Patras
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: USING CELLULAR AUTOMATA EXPERIMENTS TO MODEL PERIODONTITIS: A FIRST STEP TOWARDS UNDERSTANDING THE NONLINEAR DYNAMICS OF THE DISEASE, International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos, March 2013, World Scientific Pub Co Pte Lt,
DOI: 10.1142/s0218127413500569.
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