"an investigation on chemotaxis activity, respiratory explosion and the phagocytosis of peripheral blood neutrophils in patients affected with eop "

statement of problem: patients affected with “early onset periodontitis” (eop), are not similar regarding their neutrophil deficiency and researches have yielded contradictory results in this field. purpose: the purpose of this study was to evaluate different aspects of neutrophils’ activities in peripheral blood of such patients, especially those affected with prepubertal periodontitis and juvenile periodontitis, in iran. materials and methods: twenty patients, of periodontoloy department of dental faculty of tehran university of medical sciences, associated with 16 healthy subjects as controls, were referred to department of immunon & allergy childrens hospital, medical center tehran university, in order to investigate the relationship between the rate of chemotaxis, phagocytosis and respiratory explosion of peripheral blood neutrophils, with eop disease. in order to measure chemotaxis rate, boyden chamer method was used. also, for evaluation phagocytosis, the percentage of neutrophils that ingested yeast was investigated microscopically. to measure nadph oxidase enzyme activity, which acts at the beginning of neutrophils respiratory explosion pathway, slide method was used. measurements of phagocytosis, nbt and chemotaxis in control and case groups were compared using one- sample t test. results: results showed that there was no significant difference between the mean of chemotaxis of patients (104.85)μ-and the control group (116.93) μ-. however, 15% of patients showed a significant decrease in chemotaxis that 33% of them were affected with prepubertal periodontitis and only one case was affected with juvenile periodontitis. the average rate of phagocytosis in patients and controls were 68.7% and 67.31%, respectively. no significant difference between the average of nitro blue tetrazolium test (nbt) positive neutrophils in patients (97. 45%) and the controls (97.62%) was observed. this study showed that females affected 3 times more than males. conclusion: this study showed that there was not significant difference between the average of phagocytosis, nbt and chemotaxis in patients with eop and controls and females.