Apoptotic and Cytotoxic Effect of Two Chemical Hemostatic Agents on Human Gingival Fibroblasts (A Comparative in vitro Study)

Maintaining moisture control poses a significant challenge in clinical dentistry. While various hemostatic agents have been developed to manage bleeding during dental treatments, limited research has investigated their biological effects on surrounding oral tissues. To evaluate and compare the biological effects of ferric sulfate and aluminum chloride solutions on the Human Gingival Fibroblast cell line (HGF-1). Human Gingival Fibroblasts (HGFs) were allocated into three groups. The control group included the untreated HGFs. The ViscoStat group included HGFs treated with 20% ferric sulfate. The HemoStop group included the HGFs treated with 25% aluminum chloride. Cell viability was assessed after 24 hours of exposure. In addition, apoptosis was evaluated by analyzing Bax and BCL-2 gene expression after 24 hours of exposure utilizing RT-qPCR. Both hemostatic agents depicted decreased cell viability compared to the untreated control. However, HemoStop exhibited higher cell viability compared to ViscoStat. ViscoStat significantly decreased the mRNA of B-cell lymphoma-2 (Bcl2) and upregulated BCL-2-associated X (Bax) expression in HGFs compared to HemoStop. Our data suggest better biocompatibility with HemoStop compared to ViscoStat. In addition, HemoStop depicted significantly decreased genotoxic effect on HGFs compared to ViscoStat. Keywords: Aluminum Chloride, Ferric Sulfate, cytotoxicity, Human gingival fibroblasts, apoptosis