In vitro studies of nanosilver-doped titanium implants for oral and maxillofacial surgery

RafaÅ‚ Pokrowiecki,1,2 Tomasz ZarÄ™ba,3 Barbara Szaraniec,4 Krzysztof PaÅ‚ka,5 Agnieszka Mielczarek,6 Elżbieta Menaszek,7 Stefan Tyski3,8 1Center for Cranio-Maxillo-Facial Surgery, Voivodeship Children’s Hospital, Olsztyn, 2Department of Oral Surgery, Jagiellonian Medical University, Kraków, 3Department of Antibiotics and Microbiology, National Medicines Institute, Warsaw, 4Faculty of Material Science and Ceramics, AGH University of Science and Technology, Kraków, 5Department of Materials Engineering, Lublin University of Technology, Lublin, 6Department of Conservative Dentistry, Medical University of Warsaw, Warsaw, 7Department of Cytobiology, Collegium Medicum, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, 8Department of Pharmaceutical Microbiology, Medical University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland Abstract: The addition of an antibacterial agent to dental implants may provide the opportunity to decrease the percentage of implant failures due to peri-implantitis. For this purpose, in this study, the potential efficacy of nanosilver-doped titanium biomaterials was determined. Titanium disks were incorporated with silver nanoparticles over different time periods by Tollens reaction, which is considered to be an eco-friendly, cheap, and easy-to-perform method. The surface roughness, wettability, and silver release profile of each disc were measured. In addition, the antibacterial activity was also evaluated by using disk diffusion tests for bacteria frequently isolated from the peri-implant biofilm: Streptococcus mutans, Streptococcus mitis, Streptococcus oralis, Streptococcus sanguis, Porphyromonas gingivalis, Staphylococcus aureus, and Escherichia coli. Cytotoxicity was evaluated in vitro in a natural human osteoblasts cell culture. The addition of nanosilver significantly increased the surface roughness and decreased the wettability in a dose-dependent manner. These surfaces were significantly toxic to all the tested bacteria following a