Copyright: © 2026 by the authors. Licensee: Pirogov University.
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH

FTIR signatures of protein conformational changes in gingival crevicular fluid in children with caries and gingivitis

About authors

1 Voronezh State University, Voronezh, Russia

2 Burdenko Voronezh State Medical University, Voronezh, Russia

Correspondence should be addressed: Pavel V. Seredin
Universitetskaya pl. 1, Voronezh, 394018, Russia; ur.usv.syhp@luap

About paper

Funding: the study was supported by the Russian Science Foundation, project No. 26-15-00389, https://rscf.ru/project/26-15-00389.

Acknowledgments: the authors express their gratitude to the staff of the Pohang Accelerator Laboratory synchrotron radiation-based infrared beamline (Pohang, Republic of Korea), where some experiments were conducted within the framework of the proposal 2023-1st-12D-001 IRS.

Author contribution: Seredin PV — study concept, methods, spectral data interpretation, manuscript writing; Ippolitov YuA — clinical design of the study, participant recruitment, dental patient examination; Ippolitov IYu — participant recruitment, dental patient examination; Goloshchapov DL — spectrum acquisition and processing, deconvolution and multivariate analysis; Litvinova TA — literature review, statistical processing, manuscript writing and editing.

Compliance with ethical standards: the study approved by the Ethics Committee of the Burdenko Voronezh State Medical University (protocol No. 3 dated March 24, 2026) was conducted in accordance with ethical standard and the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki (2013 update). The informed consent for participation in the study was obtained from legal representatives of all subjects.

Received: 2026-06-15 Accepted: 2026-07-21 Published online: 2026-07-31
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The relevance of the study is associated with the search for minimally invasive molecular signatures of the dentogingival complex tissue condition in children. A pilot study aimed to identify spectral signatures of protein conformational changes in gingival crevicular fluid from children aged 8–14 years with dental caries and gingival inflammation (gingivitis) based on analysis of the IR spectral Amide III band in a pilot cohort. Gingival crevicular fluid samples collected from 20 children aged 8–14 years with different dental status were analyzed. FTIR spectra were acquired using synchrotron-based Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy in a Bruker Vertex 80/v spectrometer in the range of 3800–700 cm–1 with a focus on the Amide III region. Spectral deconvolution combined with multivariate analysis was used to estimate the contribution of protein secondary-structure elements. In the pilot cohort, dental caries was associated with a directed increase in the total contribution of components related to β-sheet structures. Based on the summed contributions of the main secondary structure elements, the β-sheet contribution exceeded 50% across the four analytical groups, the disordered component ranged approximately from 21 to 31%, and the contributions of β-turns and α-helical components remained below 10–11%. Inflammatory gingival changes showed a tendency toward a decreased contribution of β-turns and a relative increase in disordered conformations. Thus, the Amide III profile may reflect integral physicochemical changes in proteins of gingival crevicular fluid in individuals with caries and gingivitis. The reported features should be regarded as candidate spectral signatures of a hypothesis-generating nature that require further clinical validation.

Keywords: gingivitis, gingival crevicular fluid, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, Amide III band, protein secondary structure, spectral deconvolution, multivariate analysis, dental caries

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