Who we are and what we stand for
ICOSIM stands for: International College of Maxillo-mandibular Osteoimmunology. The company was founded on 21 January 2015 in Munich and registered as a registered association in the Munich Register of Associations. ICOSIM is a community interest group of therapists, and does not pursue any economic objectives. ICOSIM does not compete, but cooperates with numerous medical and dental organisations, all sharing the same objectives of systemic integration and complementary medicine, such as DEGUZ (www.deguz.de), GZM (www.gzm.org), IAOMT, ZAEN und EHK. The main focus of ICOSIM e.V. lies in a holistic integrative treatment approach developed within research and development carried out by Dr. Lechner, Prof. J. Bouquot and many others:
- Hitherto disregarded bone marrow defects cause the expression patterns of certain cytokines to become derailed, and thus immunologically effective (PubMed: PMC6233471). These cytokines are IL 1-ra, MCP-1 /CCL2 and particularly RANTES/CCLS (PubMed: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23637551).
- A range of autoimmune diseases (e.g. sarcoidosis, multiple sclerosis, Lyme disease among others) are caused by the overexpression of the proinflammatory chemokine RANTES/CCLS (PubMed: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29184447); these associations led to the term maxillo-mandibular osteoimmunology.
- Conventional X-ray techniques don’t always show these bone marrow defects (PubMed: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25170282). For this reason, ICOSIM e.V. supports the development of advanced ultrasound diagnostics (www.cavitau.de/en/)
- Maxillo-mandibular osteoimmunology also considers implants (PubMed: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30174768) and endodontically treated teeth (PubMed: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25792853) as possible triggers of systemic diseases.