Gülnur Emingil

1 Introduction Dentists will engage with a variety of patients, including transgender and gender-diverse individuals. Transgender is the umbrella term for people outside of binary gender roles (Bauer et al. 2009; Conard 2017). An individual whose gender identity, gender expression, or behavioral manifestations deviate from their biologically assigned sex at birth is characterized as transgender (Hanson et al. 2023).

Toll-like receptor (TLR)-9, may play a role in periodontal disease inflammation. This study measured TLR-9 and its related molecules, absence in melanoma-2 (AIM-2) and Z-DNA-binding protein-1 (ZBP-1), in gingival crevicular fluid (GCF) from patients with varying stages of periodontal disease to assess the role of pathogen-derived nucleic acids in inflammation.

2.6 Statistical analysis The statistical power of the study was calculated using G*Power 3.1.9.2. A minimum of 67 patients were required in each group to achieve 80% power with a significance = .05 for a type 1 error in a medium class (d = 0.5) effect-size. To account for missing data approximately 10% more (70–80) participants were intended for each group.