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In recent years, there has been a tremendous expansion in medical and dental research concerned with free radicals, reactive oxygen species, and anti-oxidant defense mechanisms. This review is intended to provide a critical, up-to-date summary of the field, with particular emphasis on its implications for the application of "anti-oxidant therapy" in periodontal disease. We have reviewed the nomenclature, mechanisms of actions, features, and sources of most common free radicals and reactive oxygen species, as well as analyzed the typical biological targets for oxidative damage. Based on a review of direct and indirect anti-oxidant host defenses, particularly in relation to the key role of polymorphonuclear neutrophils in periodontitis, we review current evidence for oxidative damage in chronic inflammatory periodontal disease, and the possible therapeutic effects of anti-oxidants in treating and/or preventing such pathology, with special attention to vitamin E and Co-enzyme Q.

Is there an interdependence between Art and Science? Is there a link between culture and science, or the "two cultures", as C.P.Snow defined them (Snow, 1963). Snow considered it "dangerous to have two cultures which don't communicate". He spoke of "literary intellectuals at one pole, at the other scientists...between the two a wall of mutual incomprehension." Scientific research unleavened by a broad mind, by contact outside its inevitably narrow remit, eventually becomes an unguided missile, unanswerable to humanity, morality, to reasoning beyond the merely technical. And herein lies a problem-for us. In a subject as practically based as dentistry, it is relatively easy, without deep thought, to adopt technical and material innovations. Indeed, in an area of medicine and surgery so technical, it is arguably often harder to shift basic reasoning than basic equipment. And old concepts die hard. We hear what we want to hear

Freeze-etching was used to study the ultrastructure of several isolates representative of morphologic types of bacteria found in dental plague. It is a useful technique for ultrastructural examination of apparently viable bacteria, and it has possible applications in the study of the structural appearance and interrelationships of oral bacteria in plaque.