The color of the gingiva has a tremendous impact on the esthetics of the smile. Clinically gingival melanin hyper pigmentation is presented as ‘black gum’ which is a common esthetic problem especially for those who have gummy smile. Several attempts have been made for removal of gingival pigmentation by different techniques. Each technique had its own supremacy in efficiency and also draw back....

Minocycline is a commonly used antibiotic for long-term treatment of acne vulgaris. A well-documented and cosmetically dis-pleasing side effect is skin pigmentation. Three distinct types occur: Type I, blue-black/grey pigment on the face in areas of scarring or inflammation associated with acne; type II, blue-grey pigment on normal skin on the shins and forearms; type III, diffuse muddy-brown d...

Introduction:Aesthetics, the science of beauty, is an inseparable part of today’s dental treatment. Excessive gingival pigmentation is a major esthetic concern for many people, especially in patients with a gummy smile. Gingival pigmentation results from melanin granules, which are produced by melanoblasts. The degree of pigmentation depends on melanoblastic activity. Though it is not a patholo...

Human skin is repeatedly exposed to UVR that influences the function and survival of many cell types and is regarded as the main causative factor in the induction of skin cancer. It has been traditionally believed that skin pigmentation is the most important photoprotective factor, as melanin, besides functioning as a broadband UV absorbent, has antioxidant and radical scavenging properties. Be...

Knowledge of melanin chemistry has important implications for the study of the evolutionary ecology of animal pigmentation, but the actual chemical diversity of these widely expressed biological pigments has been largely overlooked. Considering all melanin forms and the different conditions of endogenous oxidative stress during their synthesis provides information about physiological costs and ...

The molecular basis of pigmentation variation within and among Drosophila species is largely attributed to genes in melanin biosynthesis pathway, which involves dopamine metabolism. Most of the genetic changes underlying pigmentation variations reported to date are changes at the expression levels of the structural genes in the pathway. Within D. melanogaster, changes in cis-regulatory regions ...

Through a process known as melanogenesis, melanocyte produces melanin in specialized organelles termed melanosomes, which regulates pigmentation of the skin, eyes, and hair. Gp96 is a constitutively expressed heat shock protein in the endoplasmic reticulum whose expression is further upregulated upon ultraviolet irradiation. However, the roles and mechanisms of this chaperone in pigmentation bi...

The presence of melanocytes in the oral epithelium is a well-established fact, but their physiological functions are not well defined. Melanin provides protection from environmental stressors such as ultraviolet radiation and reactive oxygen species; and melanocytes function as stress-sensors having the capacity both to react to and to produce a variety of microenvironmental cytokines and growt...

BACKGROUND The Fitzpatrick skin phototype classification scheme has become the standard method for assessing the reaction of the skin to solar stimuli; this method can be easily biased by different factors, such as ethnicity or chronic sun exposure. METHODS Diffuse reflectance spectrophotometry (DRS) is an objective and non-invasive method used in this work to determine constitutive skin colo...