The effect on TGF-beta 1 on osseointegration.

Conventional techniques for placement of endosseous implants may take more than one year for extraction, healing, implant placement and restoration. Although clinical success rates are reported to be greater than 90 percent, failures do occur, in part because of incomplete osseointegration at the implant-bone interface. We hypothesized that implants placed in the standard fashion into extraction sockets and edentulous ridges of mature minipigs treated with human recombinant Transforming Growth Factor (TGF-beta 1), a multifunctional regulatory protein, will achieve a more rapid and higher percentage surface of osseointegration than in comparable sites without TGF-beta 1. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that TGF-beta 1 is an osteoinductive factor in vivo enhancing the quantity of osseointegration of endosseous implants. However, the rate of osseointegration was not accelerated.