Dr. Martin Taubman, Professor at Forsyth Institute and Associate Editor of the Journal of Dental Research, recently received the DENTSPLY/Harold Slavkin Oral Health Science Award at the Friends of NIDCR dinner. The award is presented annually to an individual who have demonstracted creative and innovative use of science curricula to teach oral health.

The Journal of Dental Research would like to congratulate Dr. Taubman on this award and applaud his work with the next generation of dental researchers.

An article, posted OnlineFirst on March 4, 2013 for the Journal of Dental Research,  has been featured on the BBC News Health page. The post on the article, “Adult Human Gingival Epithelial Cells as a Source for Whole-tooth Bioengineering,”can be found at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21718402. The full published article can be found at jdr.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/03/04/0022034513481041.full.pdf+html.

Today, the International and American Associations for Dental Research (IADR/AADR) published a special editorial titled “IADR-Global Oral Health Inequalities Research Agenda®: An IADR Board Call to Action.” The key objective of the IADR-Global Oral Health Inequalities: The Research Agenda (IADR-GOHIRA®) is to articulate a research agenda to generate the evidence for a strategy that if properly implemented will reduce inequalities in oral health within a generation. The editorial, by lead author Harold Sgan-Cohen, Hebrew University-Hadassah, is published in the IADR/AADR Journal of Dental Research.

While there have been major improvements in oral health in the last 30 years, with research leading to remarkable advances in the prevention and treatment of disease, inequalities remain and a marked social gradient in oral health is seen similar to that in general health. Global inequalities in oral health persist both, between and within different regions and societies; and they undermine the fabric, productivity and quality of life of many of the world’s peoples.

IADR recognizes that to date there has been limited success in translating research into effective action to promote global oral health and eliminate inequalities. It is increasingly apparent that addressing this challenge will require closer and more robust engagement across sectors, including social policy, and the adoption of an upstream approach that integrates action on oral health with approaches to reduce the global burden of non-communicable disease in general. The essence of the present Call to Action is to focus the attention of international leaders in oral health research on this issue. IADR is committed to accepting a scientific, social and moral leadership role in achieving this goal.

The special editorial provides more background about the IADR-GOHIRA and it outlines the IADR-GOHIRA research priorities, the overall aim, and the outcome priorities and timeline for implementation.

“The IADR Board of Directors is pleased the IADR-GOHIRA effort has captured the imagination of the global health research community,” said IADR President Mary MacDougall. “We look forward to stimulating the research needed to reduce oral health inequalities.”

Visit http://jdr.sagepub.com/content/early/recent to read the complete editorial.

Today, the International and American Associations for Dental Research (IADR/AADR) published a paper titled “ß-catenin is Required in Odontoblasts for Tooth Root Formation.” The paper, written by lead authors Tak-Heun Kim and Cheol-Hyeon Bae, Chonbuk National University Korea School of Dentistry, Laboratory for Craniofacial Biology, is published in the IADR/AADR Journal of Dental Research.

The tooth root, together with the surrounding periodontium, maintains the tooth in the jaw. The root develops after the crown forms, a process called morphogenesis. While the molecular and cellular mechanisms of early tooth development and crown morphogenesis have been extensively studied, little is known about the molecular mechanisms controlling tooth root formation.

In this study, Kim and Bae et al show that a protein called ß-catenin is strongly expressed in odontoblasts – the cells that develop the tooth dentin, and is required for root formation. Tissue-specific inactivation of ß-catenin in developing odontoblasts produced molars lacking roots and aberrantly thin incisors.

At the beginning of root formation in the mutant molars, the cervical loop epithelium extended apically to form Hertwig’s epithelial root sheath (HERS), but root odontoblast differentiation was disrupted and followed by the loss of a subset of HERS inner layer cells. However, outer layer of HERS extended without the root, and the mutant molars finally erupted. The periodontal tissues invaded extensively into the dental pulp. These results indicate that there is a cell-autonomous requirement for Wnt/ß-catenin signaling in the dental mesenchyme for root formation.

“The striking tooth phenotypes in this study shed light on how Wnt signaling regulates odontoblast fate and root development,” said JDR Associate Editor Joy Richman.

A perspective article titled “Tooth Eruption without Roots” by Xiu-Ping Wang, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, has been written to further elaborate on root development and tooth eruption. Visit http://jdr.sagepub.com/content/early/recent to read both articles.

I am happy to review the JDR‘s 2012 year for our readership. I feel that the Journal has continued to make excellent progress in the promotion of excellence in scientific publication in the oral, dental and craniofacial sciences.   The JDR is currently ranked #1/81 journals in Dentistry for Eigenfactor™ Score at 0.2171 and #3/81 journals in 2-year impact factor at 3.486.  As such, the journal remains strong in key metrics of scientific publication quality, especially in light of the largest journal years in the history of JDR in 2010 and 2011 for numbers of papers published (for the main JDR and for the eSupplement Advances in Dental Research).

The Journal owes much to several key individuals who support the JDR on a daily basis such as Dr. Christopher Fox, Denise Streszoff, Kourtney Skinner and Lily Knol at the JDR Headquarters in Alexandria. The editors are also highly appreciative of the staff at SAGE Publishing, in particular, Courtney Pugh and Debbie Sourgen, who have done an excellent job in developing a strong working relationship between the IADR/AADR Central Offices and SAGE to produce a quality product in the JDR.  Ms. Karen Gardner as my editorial assistant at the University of Michigan helps me on the day-to-day administration of the JDR and handling manuscript page proofs between the authors, our office and SAGE. I am also very grateful for the excellent progress the associate editors of the journal have made: (Professors Dana Graves and Marty Taubman, continuing on as Associate Editors for Critical Reviews in Oral Biology and Medicine, and Discovery!, respectively) and for the associate editors of the journal, Professors Joy Richman, Jack Ferracane and Jacques Nör. I am highly appreciative of the excellent management of challenging manuscript decisions given that JDR’s acceptance rate remains at ~10% on research reports.

Annual Author and Reader Survey Results for 2011-12

Upon completion of an article, our publisher SAGE sends an automatic email to authors inviting them to participate in a survey. Authors are asked to give feedback on the peer review process, timeliness from submission to publication, the editorial process, and other production-related questions. These automatically emailed author surveys started in early 2011 and have continued. Results from feedback gathered between May 2011 and June 2012 are summarized below.

Timeliness from submission, through peer review to first decision:
92% of authors said: Good or Excellent

Value of peer review comments and feedback:
85% of authors said Good or Excellent

Levels and quality of communication from Editor(s):
95% of authors said Good or Excellent

Time from acceptance by the Editor(s) to publication in an issue:
85% of authors said Good or Excellent

Overall experience with online submission system:
90% of authors said Good or Excellent

Overall satisfaction level with the journal’s editorial office (on a scale of 1 to 5):
Average score: 4.94 (95%)

Based on these data over the past two years we find that the authors submitting and having their papers accepted and published in the JDR are generally satisfied with the quality and timeliness of publication of their research.

Below are some more significant accomplishments of the JDR for 2012:

1.    Manuscript Processing.  Table 1 illustrates the progress that has been sustained in since 2010* related to expeditious manuscript processing.  The time from submission to acceptance has gone from nearly 3 months to 17.4 days.  This increase in manuscript processing efficiency is due to several factors including our editors, journal staff and the SAGEtrack processing system. The above readership survey results verify that overall authors continue to submit quality manuscripts to the JDR and that the word is getting out that the JDR is a leading journal in manuscript turnaround time and quality.

Figure 1 demonstrates the high stringency of acceptance rate overall, especially when recognizing we receive invited papers from Critical Review, Advances in Dental Research, and Editorials.

2.    Manuscript Submissions.  The JDR remains attractive for manuscript submissions of both original reports and reviews.  It is anticipated when we include Advances submissions, and revisions there will be > 1,000 manuscripts submitted for 2012.
3.    Promotion of JDR Research.  We have dedicated efforts on the multiple press releases on JDR manuscripts.  We generally have a perspective article or editorial co-publish on a particular paper of interest. In April we published an unsolicited manuscript on the Eigenfactor™ score and the uniqueness of dentistry as a highly specialized field.¹ We also encourage the publication of Discovery! articles that may promote papers publish in other top tier journals (e.g., see the September 2012 work by Darveau and co-workers on P. gingivalis as a community activator of disease that was a JDR follow-up on the recent paper published by this group in Cell Host and Microbe).² We published a provocative Clinical Review (a new section of the Journal added in 2011) by Caufield et al³ that was connected with a commentary by Satu Alaluusua.⁴ A Discovery! article was published in November on the highlights of the AADR Fall-focused Symposium held in Washington, D.C. last year on Oral Health Disparities and the Future Face of America.⁵ We had an original report on microRNAs and obesity and inflammation with main article and perspective.^{6, 7} In March we published the results of a very large PBRN on caries treatment^{8, 9} as well as an innovative study on the development of a caries vaccine.^{10, 11} An important paper on the prevalence of periodontal disease based on a recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention received a lot of interest from major news sources.^{12, 13}

There are still plans and opportunities for pod-casting, video and other online materials for JDR subscribers. SAGE used the JDR as a first journal that was to take advantage of mobile usage for both the JDR and Advances in Dental Research (both apps available since 2011).  You can see below in Figure 2 the increased usage of these services by the JDR readership in just the 2nd year of launch.

4.    Continue Publication of Advances in Dental Research supplements.  2011 was a record year for Advances in Dental Research Publications.  In 2012 we published two e-supplements, the first edited by P. Phantumvanit and P-E Petersen on effective fluoride use in Asia¹⁴  and the second edited by J.M. ‘Bob’ ten Cate on the proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Novel Anti-caries and Remineralization Agents held in Chile.¹⁵
5.    Special Issues on Clinical Research.  I believe we had a very successful launch of the clinical research supplement that published in June 2012 in time for preview at the IADR meeting in Iguaçu Falls, Brazil.  We had a broad array of manuscripts as a part of the special issue including research advocacy, personalized medicine, endodontics, oral pathology, craniofacial genetics, pain control, orthodontics, prosthodontics, health services research and more. This work was put into the context of the emerging advances in clinical and translational research.¹⁶ See the link to this special issue (http://jdr.sagepub.com/content/91/7_suppl.toc).  Of note, 10 of the 20 top cited papers for this most recent period are from the clinical supplement (http://jdr.sagepub.com/reports/most-cited). For 2013, two additional clinical supplements are planned (one to publish June 2013 and the other to publish December 2013/January 2014).

I thank the readership, our authors and reviewers as we continue to strive to grow the journal while maintaining our journal’s excellent tradition that has served the JDR in its greater than 90 years of existence.  I value the input from the board to maintain the high stature of the JDR.

William Giannobile
Editor-in-Chief
Journal of Dental Research

References

1.         Sillet A, Katsahian S, Range H, Czernichow S, Bouchard P. The Eigenfactor Score in highly specific medical fields: the dental model. J Dent Res 2012;91(4):329-33.

2.         Darveau RP, Hajishengallis G, Curtis MA. Porphyromonas gingivalis as a potential community activist for disease. J Dent Res 2012;91(9):816-20.

3.         Caufield PW, Li Y, Bromage TG. Hypoplasia-associated severe early childhood caries–a proposed definition. J Dent Res 2012;91(6):544-50.

4.         Alaluusua S. Defining developmental enamel defect-associated childhood caries: where are we now? J Dent Res 2012;91(6):525-7.

5.         Ebersole JL, D’Souza R, Gordon S, Fox CH. Oral health disparities and the future face of america. J Dent Res 2012;91(11):997-1002.

6.         D’Aiuto F, Suvan J. Obesity, inflammation, and oral infections: are microRNAs the missing link? J Dent Res 2012;91(1):5-7.

7.         Perri R, Nares S, Zhang S, Barros SP, Offenbacher S. MicroRNA modulation in obesity and periodontitis. J Dent Res 2012;91(1):33-8.

8.         Milgrom P, Tanzer JM. Perspectives on PACS: where is caries prevention clinical research going? J Dent Res 2012;91(2):122-4.

9.         Papas AS, Vollmer WM, Gullion CM, Bader J, Laws R, Fellows J, et al. Efficacy of chlorhexidine varnish for the prevention of adult caries: a randomized trial. J Dent Res 2012;91(2):150-5.

10.       Smith DJ. Prospects in caries vaccine development. J Dent Res 2012;91(3):225-6.

11.       Shi W, Li YH, Liu F, Yang JY, Zhou DH, Chen YQ, et al. Flagellin enhances saliva IgA response and protection of anti-caries DNA vaccine. J Dent Res 2012;91(3):249-54.

12.       Papapanou PN. The prevalence of periodontitis in the US: forget what you were told. J Dent Res 2012;91(10):907-8.

13.       Eke PI, Dye BA, Wei L, Thornton-Evans GO, Genco RJ. Prevalence of periodontitis in adults in the United States: 2009 and 2010. J Dent Res 2012;91(10):914-20.

14.       Petersen PE, Phantumvanit P. Toward effective use of fluoride in Asia. Adv Dent Res 2012;24(1):2-4.

15.       ten Cate JM. New agents for caries prevention: introduction to ICNARA 2. Adv Dent Res 2012;24(2):27.

16.       Giannobile WV, Joskow RW. Clinical and translational oral health research: prospects for the future. J Dent Res 2012;91(7):633-6.

Rena N. D’Souza, Jeffrey L. Ebersole, Christopher H. Fox, Peter J. Polverini and Frank A. Scannapieco have published a commentary in JADA entitled, “How practicing dentists can shape dental research: The American Association for Dental Research’s vision for the future.” The commentary can be found at: http://jada.ada.org/content/143/10/1069.full.html?etoc

Sense of coherence (SOC) has been related to oral health behaviors and oral health related quality of life (OHRQoL) in observational studies. This cluster randomized trial aimed to test the effect of an intervention to enhance SOC on OHRQoLin children.

In this study, 12 primary schools in Thailand were randomly allocated to intervention and control groups. The intervention comprised seven sessions over two months, focusing on child participation and empowerment. The first four sessions were classroom activities and the last three involved working on healthy school projects. Trained teachers, who received a one-day course, delivered the intervention. Socio-demographic and clinical data, together
with self-report measures of OHRQoL, SOC and oral health beliefs were obtained from 261 10 to 12 year olds (133 in the intervention and 128 in the control group). Data were collected at baseline, two weeks after the intervention and at three month follow-up. Mixed effects models indicated that the intervention increased SOC and improved OHRQoL, together with oral health beliefs and gingival health.

The findings offer experimental evidence that OHRQoL can be influenced by SOC. SOC may also provide an avenue for oral health promotion. “The IADR/AADR Journal of Dental Research is pleased to publish this study about enhancing oral health via sense of
coherence,” said JDR Editor-in-Chief William Giannobile. “This study provides an in-depth look at a cluster randomized trial for patient oral health motivational strategies.”

A companion perspective article titled “Are dental health behaviors rational, after all?” was written by Gary Slade, University of North Carolina, USA. In it, Slade highlights that the new study by Nammontri et al. demonstrated benefits for children’s oral health while advancing researchers’ understanding of health behaviors and additional investigations will be necessary to verify the benefits of the intervention.
Visit http://jdr.sagepub.com/content/early/recent for links to the complete articles.

An article, published in the October 2012 issue of the Journal of Dental Research, has been featured on DrBicuspid.com, a Hygiene Community blog. The post on the article, “Changes in Body Weight and Adiposity Predict Periodontits Progression in Men,”can be found at http://www.drbicuspid.com/index.aspx?sec=sup&sub=hyg&pag=dis&ItemID=311470. The full published article can be found at http://jdr.sagepub.com/content/current.

In a study titled “Prevalence of Periodontis in Adults in the United States: 2009 and 2010,” lead author Paul Eke, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, estimates the prevalence, severity and extent of periodontitis in the adult U.S population using data from the 2009 and 2010 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) cycle. The study is published in the Journal of Dental Research, the official publication of the International and American Associations for Dental Research (IADR/AADR).

Estimates were derived from a sample of 3,742 adults 30 years and older with one or more natural teeth of the civilian non-institutionalized population. Attachment loss and probing depth were measured at six sites per tooth on all teeth (except the third molars). The study is important because it is the first national probability sample that has employed a full-mouth periodontal examination protocol versus previous partial mouth examinations.

Of the sample presented, 47.2 percent, representing 64.7 million adults, had periodontitis distributed as 8.7 percent, 30.0 percent and 8.5 percent with mild, moderate and severe periodontitis respectively. For adults 65 years and older, 64 percent had either moderate or severe periodontitis. These estimates are far higher than previous national estimates.

Periodontitis was highest in males, Mexican Americans, adults with less than high school education, adults below 100% Federal Poverty Levels, and current smokers. This survey has provided direct evidence for a high burden of periodontitis in the adult U.S. population, especially among adults 65 and older.

A perspective article titled “The prevalence of periodontics in the US: Forget what you were told” was written by Panos Papapanou, Columbia University. In it, Papapanou writes that the data presented by Eke et al. challenge us to rethink certain issues and to conduct the appropriate research that will produce evidence-based answers.

For full text either log into the IADR/AADR members only section or visit http://jdr.sagepub.com/content/early/recent

The JDR article Early Maternal Psychosocial Factors Are Predictors for Adolescent Caries, published September 2012,  and lead investigator Suchitra Nelson were recently highlighted by Daily News & Analysis.