Background: The preservation of bone volume immediately after tooth removal might be necessary to optimize the success of implant placement in terms of esthetics and function. The objectives of this randomized clinical trial were two‐fold: 1) to compare the bone dimensional changes following tooth extraction with extraction plus ridge preservation using corticocancellous porcine bone and a collagen membrane; and 2) to analyze and compare histologic and histomorphometric aspects of the extraction‐alone sites to the grafted sites.Methods: Forty subjects who required tooth extraction and implant placement were enrolled in this study. Using a computer‐generated randomization list, the subjects were randomly assigned to the control group (EXT; extraction alone) or to the test group (RP; ridge‐preservation procedure with corticocancellous porcine bone and collagen membrane). The following parameters were assessed immediately after extraction and 7 months prior to implant placement: plaque index, gingival index, bleeding on probing, horizontal ridge width, and vertical ridge changes. A bone biopsy was taken from the control and test sites 7 months after the surgical treatment. Histologic and histomorphometric analyses were also performed.Results: A significantly greater horizontal reabsorption was observed at EXT sites (4.3 ± 0.8 mm) compared to RP sites (2.5 ± 1.2 mm). The ridge height reduction at the buccal side was 3.6 ± 1.5 mm for the extraction‐alone group, whereas it was 0.7 ± 1.4 mm for the ridge‐preservation group. Moreover, the vertical change at the lingual sites was 0.4 mm in the ridge‐preservation group and 3 mm in the extraction‐alone group. Forty biopsies were harvested from the experimental sites (test and control sites). The biopsies harvested from the grafted sites revealed the presence of trabecular bone, which was highly mineralized and well structured. Particles of the grafted material could be identified in all samples. The bone formed in the control sites was also well structured with a minor percentage of mineralized bone. The amount of connective tissue was significantly higher in the extraction‐alone group than in the ridge‐preservation group.Conclusions: The ridge‐preservation approach using porcine bone in combination with collagen membrane significantly limited the resorption of hard tissue ridge after tooth extraction compared to extraction alone. Furthermore, the histologic analysis showed a significantly higher percentage of trabecular bone and total mineralized tissue in ridge‐preservation sites compared to extraction‐alone sites 7 months after tooth removal.

Many risk factors for osteoarthritis (OA) have been noted, while gender/sex differences have been understated. The work aimed to systematically review literature investigating as primary aim the relationship between gender/sex related discriminants and OA. The search was performed in PubMed, Science Direct and Web of Knowledge in the last 10 years. Inclusion criteria were limited to clinical studies of patients affected by OA in any joints, analyzing as primary aim gender/sex differences. Exclusion criteria were review articles, in vitro, in vivo and ex vivo studies, case series studies and papers in which gender/sex differences were adjusted as confounding variable. Of the 120 records screened, 42 studies were included. Different clinical outcomes were analyzed: morphometric differences, followed by kinematics, pain, functional outcomes after arthroplasty and health care needs of patients. Women appear to use more health care, have higher OA prevalence, clinical pain and inflammation, decreased cartilage volume, physical difficulty, and smaller joint parameters and dimensions, as compared to men. No in-depth studies or mechanistic studies analyzing biomarker differential expressions, molecular pathways and omic profiles were found that might drive preclinical and clinical research towards sex-/gender-oriented protocols.