Incorporation of Arginine to Commercial Orthodontic Light-Cured Resin Cements—Physical, Adhesive, and Antibacterial Properties

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have added arginine to commercially available dental resins and evaluated the adhesion strength and antibacterial properties of the resulting products.

Not sure what's going on in lines 186-200?

What is the exact mechanism by which arginine couples with the unsaturated bonds during light-initiated crosslinking? This should be confirmed by appropriate analytical chemistry techniques.

Can the authors demonstrate/comment on the performance of these modified adhesive under varying pH conditions and other salts in saliva (simulated saliva)?

Besides that, the researchers have verified both their null hypotheses (one completely and one in part). I have no further comments.

Author Response

Reviewer #1

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors have added arginine to commercially available dental resins and evaluated the adhesion strength and antibacterial properties of the resulting products.

Not sure what's going on in lines 186-200?

Thank you for pointing that out. This was added to guide our writing for the method’s chapter. The paragraphs have been removed.

What is the exact mechanism by which arginine couples with the unsaturated bonds during light-initiated crosslinking? This should be confirmed by appropriate analytical chemistry techniques.

Dear reviewer, it is a very interesting question, however, in this study, we did not venture to evaluate such bonding mechanism, and therefore, did not add any of it to the discussion chapter. It should be evaluated in future studies though. Again, thank you for the suggestion.

Can the authors demonstrate/comment on the performance of these modified adhesive under varying pH conditions and other salts in saliva (simulated saliva)?

Although we did not demonstrate in this study, we believe that the addition of arginine has the potential to minimize the dental biofilm cariogenic attack to enamel adjacent to the material upon pH variations. Your question is relevant and shall be considered in future studies.  As far the performance of the modified adhesive to salts presents in simulated saliva, we also did not demonstrate in the proposes study. A literature search on pub med ("arginine" [tiab] AND "saliva" [tiab] AND "salts" [tiab]) did not show published articles. It seems an interesting aspect to pursue for the modified adhesive. Thank you for the question though.

Besides that, the researchers have verified both their null hypotheses (one completely and one in part). I have no further comments.

Thank you for your time and guidance.

Reviewer 2 Report

 

More suitable title should be selected for a broader audience. 
1)More detail Abstract needed: the abstract should contain Objectives, Methods/Analysis, Findings, and Novelty /Improvement.
2)It is suggested to present the structure of the article at the end of the introduction.
3)The major defect of this study is the debate or Argument is not clear stated in the introduction session. Hence, the contribution is weak in this manuscript. I would suggest the author to enhance your theoretical discussion and arrives your debate or argument.
4)The necessity and innovation of the article should be presented to the introduction.
5)A flowchart should be added to the article to show the research methodology.
6) Fig. 1 is clear enough, it need to be work on, and label the axis titles
7) Much more explanations and interpretations must be added for the Results, which are not enough.
8) It is suggested to add articles entitled to the literature review."BI Oladapo, et al. 3D printing of bone scaffolds with hybrid biomaterials, Composites Part B:158, 428-436", "BI Oladapo, SA Zahedi, Improving bioactivity and strength of PEEK composite polymer for bone application, Materials Chemistry and Physics 266, 124485
" "BI Oladapo, SA Zahedi, SO Ismail, Mechanical performances of hip implant design and fabrication with PEEK composite, Polymer 227, 123865.
" "BI Oladapo, SA Zahedi, FT Omigbodun, A systematic review of Polymer composite in biomedical engineering, European Polymer Journal, 110534
" and "BI Oladapo, et. al., 3D printing of PEEK–cHAp scaffold for medical bone implant, Bio-Design and Manufacturing 4 (1), 44-59" 
9) It is suggested to compare the results of the present research with some similar studies which is done before.
10) Please make sure your conclusions' section underscore the scientific value added of your paper, and/or the applicability of your

Author Response

Reviewer #2

More suitable title should be selected for a broader audience.

Dear reviewer, please, could you give us a suggestion as to how more suitable the title could be? Do you believe this is better: Physical and Adhesive properties of arginine-based orthodontic cements? Or “Incorporation of Arginine to Orthodontic resin Cements”?

1)More detail Abstract needed: the abstract should contain Objectives, Methods/Analysis, Findings, and Novelty /Improvement.

Dear reviewer, thank you for your comment. We have accommodated your suggestions to the abstract and at the same time we followed the recommendations in the template provided by publisher. In these recommendations, Analysis, Findings as well as Novelty/Improvement are not present.

2)It is suggested to present the structure of the article at the end of the introduction.

Dear reviewer, we are sorry but did not understand what you meant by “present the structure of the article at the end of the introduction”. We followed what was is recommended by the publisher as follow:

“1. Introduction

The introduction should briefly place the study in a broad context and highlight why it is important. It should define the purpose of the work and its significance. The current state of the research field should be carefully reviewed, and key publications cited. Please highlight controversial and diverging hypotheses when necessary. Finally, briefly mention the main aim of the work and highlight the principal conclusions. As far as possible, please keep the introduction comprehensible to scientists outside your particular field of research. References should be numbered in order of appearance and indicated by a numeral or numerals in square brackets—e.g., [1] or [2,3], or [4–6]. See the end of the document for further details on references.”

Please, we really would appreciate if you could provide guidance on what you are requesting, so we can diligently provide feedback on this issue.

3)The major defect of this study is the debate or Argument is not clear stated in the introduction session. Hence, the contribution is weak in this manuscript. I would suggest the author to enhance your theoretical discussion and arrives your debate or argument.

Dear reviewer. Thank you for your comments/suggestions. We truly believe our arguments were well placed and fundamentally based on solid scientific evidence that patients going through orthodontic treatment still suffer from white spot lesions, and that alternative preventive treatments based on of self-defense dental biomaterials are relevant. However, if the reviewer would like something more specific, please, provide us some guidance, so we can work on the debate or argument.

 

4)The necessity and innovation of the article should be presented to the introduction.

Thank you for your comments/suggestions. We believe that the necessity is presented since, as mentioned earlier, patients going through orthodontic treatment increases their odds to develop white spot lesions. The innovative approach here is voiced when we added arginine to the othodontic cement material, making it less defenseless. It is worth to say that we did not add the word “innovative” since we thought it wouldn't be relevant.

5)A flowchart should be added to the article to show the research methodology.

We thank you for the suggestion and understand a flowchart could be added to the manuscript to show the research methodology. We used the template provided by the publisher and followed strictly what is recommended: “The Materials and Methods should be described with sufficient details to allow others to replicate and build on the published results”. Therefore, and for the sake of time/money, we believe the readers of the journal will be able to understand the method we described based on the information provided. Besides, if any other researcher intent to utilize such method, they will be able to reproduce efficiently.

6) Fig. 1 is clear enough, it need to be work on, and label the axis titles

Thank you again for the suggestion. We added a new image.

7) Much more explanations and interpretations must be added for the Results, which are not enough.

Dear reviewer. We really appreciate if you could provide specifics of what is not enough in the Results chapter or what type of explanations you are looking for. Indeed, this would be extremely helpful for us.

8) It is suggested to add articles entitled to the literature review.

"BI Oladapo, et al. 3D printing of bone scaffolds with hybrid biomaterials, Composites Part B:158, 428-436",

"BI Oladapo, SA Zahedi, Improving bioactivity and strength of PEEK composite polymer for bone application, Materials Chemistry and Physics 266, 124485

"BI Oladapo, SA Zahedi, SO Ismail, Mechanical performances of hip implant design and fabrication with PEEK composite, Polymer 227, 123865.

"BI Oladapo, SA Zahedi, FT Omigbodun, A systematic review of Polymer composite in biomedical engineering, European Polymer Journal, 110534

" and "BI Oladapo, et. al., 3D printing of PEEK–cHAp scaffold for medical bone implant, Bio-Design and Manufacturing 4 (1), 44-59"

Dear reviewer, we thank you for the suggestions however it seems that these references are not related to the topic of orthodontic resin cement and their ability to prevent or not white spot lesions. Please, if you can indicate in the introduction chapter a paragraph that fits one of the referenced, we would appreciate and be happy to add it.

9) It is suggested to compare the results of the present research with some similar studies which is done before.

Thank you for the suggestion. There were no other studies that evaluated incorporation of arginine to orthodontic resin cements whether in shear bond strength or the effect on bacterial activity. However, we used shear bond strength values from studies done that demonstrated clinical success (ref. 32, 33). If the reviewer has references to suggest for inclusion in the introduction, we highly appreciate.

10) Please make sure your conclusions' section underscore the scientific value added of your paper, and/or the applicability of your

Dear reviewer, unfortunately we did not understand this question. Please, feel free to re-send it again and we will do our best to address it.

 

 

Reviewer 3 Report

The present paper purposes the evaluation of arginine addition on commercial orthodontic resin cements. A deep characterization was performed by in vitro studies with the aim to study the mechanical properties as well as the antibacterial activity of the developed cements.

Some corrections must be performed

Lines 186-200. Please remove

Figure 1. The resolution is very low. Improve.

Figure 2. The resolution is very poor.

References formatting must be adapted according to journal rules

Author Response

Reviewer #3

The present paper purposes the evaluation of arginine addition on commercial orthodontic resin cements. A deep characterization was performed by in vitro studies with the aim to study the mechanical properties as well as the antibacterial activity of the developed cements.

Some corrections must be performed

Lines 186-200. Please remove

Thank you for catching that. The paragraphs have been removed.

 Figure 1. The resolution is very low. Improve.

Dear reviewer, thank you for the suggestion and a new image was inserted.

Figure 2. The resolution is very poor.

Dear reviewer, thank you for the suggestion and a new image was inserted.

References formatting must be adapted according to journal rules

Dear reviewer, thank you for catching that. All references have been updated.