Effect of Honey on Orthodontic Tooth Movement and Osteoclastic Activity in Psychologically Stressed Animals

Introduction: Orthodontics is a clinical specialty in dentistry related to the correction of dentofacial deformities. Psychological stress factors delay Orthodontic tooth movement (OTM). Honey can be considered a useful and harmless natural product to reduce stress levels, hence improves the efficacy of OTM. Aims & Objectives: To compare the differences in the rate of tooth movement and osteoclastic activity between control, psychologically stressed and honey treated psychologically stressed groups after 1 week of orthodontic force application in an animal model. Place and duration of study: This experimental study was conducted at the animal research laboratory and Histopathology Department of Post Graduate Medical Institute (PGMI), Lahore, Pakistan, from April 2019 to June 2020. Material & Methods: Thirty-six Sprague Dawley rats were randomly divided into A, B and C groups. Psychological Stress was induced in group A (PS group) while Honey was given orally as a therapeutic agent along with induction of psychological stress in group B (PSH group), and group C was the Control Group. Statistical analyses were performed using SPSS version 24 software. The quantitative variables were the orthodontic tooth movement, the osteoclast count, and the expression of RANKL. One-way ANOVA was applied to calculate the mean difference and Post hoc Tukey test applied for multiple comparisons among the groups. A p-value ? 0.05 was considered statistically significant in all 3 groups. Results: There was a significant difference (p-value <0.05) between control and experimental groups in the orthodontic tooth movement and levels of RANKL, however, there was no significant difference between PS and PSH groups. Conclusion: Psychological stress delays orthodontic tooth movement by causing a reduction in its rate and osteoclastic activity and honey has no significant correlation with lowering stress levels, hence does not improve orthodontic tooth movement efficiency.