Abstract
OBJECTIVE: The present systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to assess the oxidative stress-mediated lipid peroxidation end product malondialdehyde (MDA) in periodontitis using the available literature. MATERIALS AND METHODS: An electronic literature search was performed for the published articles from 2000 to 2022 in PubMed (MeSH), Science Direct, Wiley Online library, and cross-reference using specific keywords. RESULTS: The literature search identified 1,166 articles. After analyzing the abstracts of the obtained articles, the articles were excluded for the following reasons: duplicate studies (n = 395) and not relevant to the research question (n = 726). The remaining 45 articles were chosen for full-text evaluation. Finally, the present qualitative synthesis selected 34 articles that met the inclusion criteria for evaluation and removed the articles which did not meet the required criteria (n = 11). Out of these, 16 articles had coherent data for quantitative synthesis. The meta-analysis used the standardized mean differences method at a 95% confidence interval by random-effects model. The periodontitis group displayed significantly higher MDA levels (P < 0.001) in gingival crevicular fluid, saliva, and serum samples of the studies analyzed than the healthy control. CONCLUSION: The analyzed studies showed significantly higher MDA levels in various biological samples of patients with periodontitis, supporting the role of elevated oxidative stress and consequent lipid peroxidation in periodontitis.