Dental Pulp Derived Stem Cells for Facial Nerve Regeneration and Functional Repair: A Systematic Review of Animal Studies

Facial nerve damage can occur due to multitude of reasons such as trauma, iatrogenic reasons. The aim of this systematic review is to evaluate the effect of Dental pulp derived stem cells in regeneration, repair and functional recovery of facial nerve.

PubMed, Scopus, Cochrane were searched from inception to 1 March 2024 2023. PICO criteria was applied and articles were selected based on pre-specified inclusion and exclusion criteria. Prospero registered. The search queries have identified 137 titles, from three databases (PubMed, Cochrane and Web of Science), after application of filters for exclusion of systematic reviews and meta-analysis, duplicate exclusion (n = 12) and removal of irrelevant titles led to the final inclusion of 12 articles for full text screening. Out of these 12 studies, only 7 studies qualified for the final inclusion.

Seven articles sustained the rigorous search, were subjected to final qualitative data analysis. Within the limits of the available studies, there is low quality evidence suggesting positive potential of dental pulp derived stem cells (DPSC, SHED) with growth factors such as SCF, Neuregulin-1, VGEF on enhanced regeneration and thereby promoting repair of facial nerve in the animal facial nerve trauma model.