Expression of vascular endothelial growth factor in dental pulp of immature and mature permanent teeth in human

Objective: To investigate the expression and distribution of vascular endothelial growth factor(VEGF) in human dental pulp of immature and mature permanent teeth, and the relationship between VEGF and root development of human permanent teeth.

Methods: The normal teeth extracted for orthodontic or impacted reason were divided into two groups: group 1 contained 10 immature permanent teeth and group 2 contained 15 apical closed mature permanent teeth. The pulps were processed with immunohistochemically staining of VEGF. Image pro-plus 5.1 software was used to evaluate the histological sections and the data was analyzed by Chi-square test, Students't test, one-way ANOVA and SNK-q test with SPSS 13.0 software package.

Results: The expression of VEGF was strongly positive in the cytoplasma of pulp fibroblasts and odontoblasts in immature permanent teeth,significantly higher than in mature permanent teeth (P<0.05). The expression of VEGF was demonstrated most strongly positive in fibroblasts in the top area of apical pipe socket of immature root pulp, and gradually weakly positive toward the coronal and apical direction.

Conclusions: The expression of VEGF in dental pulp of immature and mature permanent teeth shows different characteristics. VEGF may play a role in permanent tooth development and maturation.