Evaluation of the association between Salivary Alkaline Phosphatase Enzyme (ALP) and pubertal growth spurt among Syrian children

Abstract

Introduction: Assessment of skeletal maturity is a crucial factor in developing an orthodontic treatment plan, as several methods were proposed to determine bone age away from the bias of morphological methods, which are affected by the opinion and experience of the examiner. Based on that, this study aimed to evaluate the relationship between Salivary Alkaline Phosphatase Enzyme as an indicator of maturity and the pubertal growth spurt among Syrian children.

Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 43 males and 47 females, ranging in age from 8 to 18 years. A radiograph of the middle finger of the left hand was taken for each patient, and unstimulated whole saliva samples were collected from them according to the passive drolling method. The study sample was divided into three groups (before, during, and after) puberty based on The MP3 method according to Perinetti et al, and the activity of alkaline phosphatase enzyme in saliva was measured by spectrophotometer.The Kruskal-Wallis test was conducted to investigate the differences in salivary alkaline phosphatase between skeletal maturation groups, and Spearman's correlation coefficient was conducted to study the association between alkaline phosphatase activity in saliva and the stage of skeletal maturation.

Results: The results of the statistical tests showed that there were statistically significant differences in the enzyme activity between the three groups, and there were significant differences between the pubertal and post-pubertal groups in the whole sample, spearman test showed significant correlation (p<0.05) with negative moderate coefficient value in the whole sample.

Conclusions: salivary alkaline phosphatase can be used as an auxiliary diagnostic maturity indicator among orthodontic patients.