Photodynamic Therapy Effects on Oral Dysplastic Keratinocyte Cell Cultures: A Systematic Review

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) represents a therapeutic intervention applied in various pre-malignant and malignant disorders' treatments. The interaction between a photosensitizer (PS), ideal wavelength radiation, and tissue molecular oxygen activates a series of photochemical reactions liable to produce reactive oxygen species. These highly reactive species allow for the decrease cell proliferation and yield cancerous and pre-cancerous cell death. The aim of this work is to carry out a systematic review to investigate the effects of in vitro PDT for oral potential malignant disorders (OPDM) cell lines. This systematic review was conducted according to the PRISMA protocol, and the PROSPERO registration number was CRD42022362349. An electronic search was performed on the following search engines: PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science. The Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcomes, and Study design (PICOS) has been applied as the method by which to outline our study eligibility criteria. The QUIN tool was employed to interpret the risk of bias of the included studies. Initially, seventy-five records were retrieved through databases, and after the selection steps, seven items finally met our inclusion criteria. The preliminary search resulted in 75 studies, out of which 22 were found to be duplicates. After reviewing the titles and abstracts of the remaining 53 studies, 45 were rejected as they did not meet the inclusion criteria. Further evaluation of the full texts led to the exclusion of only one article, since the full text was not available. As a result, seven studies were ultimately identified and included in the analysis. The main findings confirm the role of in vitro photodynamic therapy using several photosensitizers as a potential treatment for oral potentially malignant disorders.