The paper entitled “Modeling susceptibility to periodontitis” (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23100272) was awarded the “IADR/AADR William J. Gies Award” for 2014. The award is given for the best clinical research paper published in the Journal of Dental Research (JDR) during the preceding year. The JDR is the top ranked journal for original scientific articles in dentistry. The paper is co-authored by members of FORTH’s Institute of Computer Science, Dr. George Potamias (principal researcher) and Lefteris Koumakis (PhD, software engineer), with their colleagues Prof. Vassilis Moustakis (from the Technical University of Crete), and Prof. Bruno Loos and Ass. Prof. Marja L. Laine from ACTA (Academic Center for Dentistry Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam and VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands).

Elaborating on machine-learning approaches the authors were able to drill into periodontitis patients’ clinico-genetic data and identify reliable genetic associations with microbiological agents responsible for the periodontitis infection. The identified associations between bacterial species and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) present higher discrimination between periodontitis and periodontal health than a single bacterial species or a single polymorphism, a finding that ascertains the polygenic nature of periodontitis. As the predictive power of the induced associations is high enough, they could be utilized as susceptibility predictors for periodontitis in clinical practice.

The study was performed and the awarded paper was produced in the context of the (successfully finished) INFOBIOMED and GENE2PHEN European projects.

Contact:
George Potamias
Principal Researcher
Instituteof Computer Science,  Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH)
Email: potamias@ics.forth.gr