Efficacy of bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) with osteopromotive membranes – an experimental study in rat mandibular defects

Abstract

The effect of bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) on healing of standardized bone defects was studied with and without the placement of osteopromotive membranes. Two different bovine BMP (bBMP) preparations were tested. These contained primarily collagen as a carrier. Standardized transosseous bone defects, 5 mm in diameter, were created in mandibles of rats. If left untreated, such "critical size defects" never heal during the lifetime of the animal, whereas covering with an osteopromotive membrane is known to cause complete healing of the defects in 6 weeks. The bBMP was implanted in defects and were either covered with an expanded polytetrafluoroethylene (e-PTFE) membrane (GORE-TEX) or were left uncovered. Control defects did not receive any bBMP and were either covered with membrane or were left uncovered. Histological evaluation was made after 12 d and 24 d of healing, respectively. Implantation of bBMP alone was associated with formation of voluminous amounts of new bone, resulting in essentially complete defect healing at 24 d. However, the combination of membrane and bBMP was clearly less effective in stimulating bone healing, being only about as efficient as when using membranes alone. It was concluded that whereas both bBMP preparations were strongly osteoinductive, no further improvement of bone healing was when the membrane technique was supplemented with bBMP, compared to membrane alone. An explanation may be that the presence of an e-PTFE membrane prevents the degradation of the carrier material in the preparations, thus strongly reducing the availability of bBMP.