A Comparative Evaluation of the Efficacy of Dulbecco’s Modified Eagle’s Medium, Cornisol, University of Wisconsin Solution, Freshly Prepared Hank’s Balanced Salt Solution and Distilled Water as Tooth Storage Media on the Viability of Periodontal Ligament Cells at Different Time Intervals Using Cell Counting Kit-8 Assay: An In Vitro Study

Aim: The purpose of this in vitro study to evaluate and compare the effectiveness of Dulbecco’s Modified Eagle’s Medium (DMEM), freshly prepared Hank’s balanced salt solution (FP-HBSS), cornisol (CS), University of Wisconsin Solution (UW-CSS), and distilled water (DW) in maintaining periodontal ligament fibroblast (PDLF) cells viability at different time intervals using cell counting kit-8 (CCK-8) assay. Materials and Method: PDLFs were seeded in 75 wells of a 96 well plate. The test solutions, namely DMEM, FP-HBSS, CS, UW-CSS and DW, were added in these wells and incubated at 37°C. After treating with CCK-8 solution at 1, 12, 24, 48 and 96 h, viable cells were counted using an optical inverted microscope. Intragroup and intergroup analysis were performed using ANOVA, repeated measures ANOVA and post-hoc Bonferroni tests. Results: Statistical significance was seen between groups at all time intervals (p ≤ 0.001). DMEM showed the highest values at all time periods (p < 0.001) followed by CS, which showed significantly high values over FP-HBSS, except at 24 h time period. DW showed the least viability at 1 and 12 h, while UW-CSS demonstrated the least viable cells at the remaining time periods. DMEM and CS also showed a marked increase in the number of viable cells at 48 h (p < 0.001). Conclusion: Superior PDL cell viability was maintained by DMEM, followed by CS and FP-HBSS, as compared to UW-CSS and DW.