Table 2.

Characteristic features of animal studies included in this review.

Study (authors& year)	Study design	Type of periodontal lesion(s)	Methods	Intervention		Number of subject (n)	Follow-up	Outcome
				Control	Test
Bak et al. (2010)	In vivo prospective	Periodontitis induced by ligature	Histological analysis, micro-CT analysis, cell assays	Saline	MF (IP, 10 mg/kg body weight)	10 rats	10 days	Significantly higher bone volume and less inflammation with MF. No effect of MF on osteoclasts and adipocytes. Higher number of osteoblasts with MF
Liu et al. (2012)	In vivo prospective	Periapical lesions inducted by pulpal exposure	Histological analysis, enzyme histo-chemistry, immunofluorescence labeling, immunohist-ochemistry, cell counting	Saline	MF (IM, 40 mg/kg body weight)	40 rats	28 days	RANKL/OPG ratio lower in test group. Significantly less osteoclasts seen in MF group

CT, computer tomography; IM, intramuscular injection; IP, intraperitoneal injection; RANKL, receptor activator of nuclear factor kappa-B ligand; OPG, osteoprotegerin