The Role of Oxidative Stress in Periodontitis

Periodontitis and noncommunicable diseases share an overall inflammatory state often sustained by concomitant oxidative stress as one of the main processes involved. A huge amount of literature supports such a main pathogenic process, which is also considered the therapeutic target. The attempt to control inflammation by acting on oxidative stress has given largely unsatisfactory results, either as preventive or as treatment approaches. To propose new ideas that will help in this field, the paper reviewed all physiological processes involved in oxidative stress in periodontitis. The discussion considers all of them, considering whether they come from endogenous sources, that is, all the intracellular physiological devices and/or processes that are involved in oxidative stress, such as mitochondria, rough endoplasmic reticulum, peroxisomes, autophagy, and aging, or from exogenous sources, that is, the external factors that affect oxidative stress, such as nutrition, physical activity, psychological status, environmental conditions, microbiome, and drugs. The most important conclusion is that all of them should be taken into consideration in future research since we need to address oxidative stress as part of a specific biological and metabolic cellular state in a multicellular organism. To understand the cellular physiology that underlies oxidative stress and consider this point in treating each of our periodontal patients according to a specific oxidative state could be called personalized/precise oxidative stress therapy (POST) and should include the following points: (1) environmental conditions, (2) individual characteristics, and (3) oxidative state of different intracellular organelles.