Response to the Letter to the Editor

Dear Prof. Rattan,

We thank Dr. Takada and colleagues for their interest in our recently published article entitled “Effect of type I collagen on TLR-3 induced MMP-13 expression in human periodontal ligament fibroblasts.” We appreciate the opportunity to clarify the citation and interpretation of the literature discussed in our article.

In the Discussion section of our study, the work by Takada et al. (2017) was cited when discussing the biological effects of the TLR3 agonist poly I:C on cellular responses related to tissue repair. As correctly noted by the authors, their study demonstrated that poly I:C induces collective migration of HaCaT keratinocytes through IL-8 signaling and may contribute to epithelial wound healing. We acknowledge that their study did not examine MMP-13 expression, and therefore the citation in our article may have unintentionally suggested a relationship that was not directly investigated in their work.

In contrast, in our study poly I:C was observed to inhibit the migration of human periodontal ligament (hPDL) fibroblasts while increasing pro-MMP-13 expression. These observations suggest that cellular responses to TLR3 activation may differ depending on the cell type studied, particularly between epithelial cells and connective tissue fibroblasts.

We sincerely apologize for the inaccurate citation, which unintentionally misrepresented the findings of Dr. Takada and colleagues and may have led to confusion among the journal's readers.

We hope that this clarification adequately addresses the concerns raised and helps ensure accurate interpretation of the cited literature for the readership of the journal.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.