Controlled drug release from dental obturation cements

The main purpose of this work is to investigate the release of antibiotics incorporated in dental obturation cements. It constitutes a first approach to the development of a type of drug delivery system with great interest and potential, that still is practically inexistent in the market. Several antibiotics and root canal sealers (RCS) were pretested through microbiological and dissolution tests, respectively in order to select the system(s) to study. Ampicillin was chosen to be incorporated in two commercial RCS, AH Plus (R) and EndoREZ (R). The drug release kinetics was evaluated by high performance chromatography (HPLC) as a function of drug load and film thickness, and its microbiological efficacy after release was proven. For both sealers, ampicillin release occurred in the first few hours and depends on the drug load and film thickness. The relative amount released from EndoREZ (R) was higher, due to its higher hydrophilicity and porosity.