Background and Aims: The present study was designed for evaluation of bovine demineralized bone matrix (DBM) in healing process of bone defects and comparison of bovine DBM (xenograft) and human DBM (allograft) which is used clinically.

Materials and Methods: Seven male white New Zealand rabbits were used in this study. The incision was made directly over the midsagital suture of the parietal bone. Then 3 bicortical defects were created with trephine bur No.8 (8mm diameter). The defects were randomly filled with graft materials. One of the defects was left without any graft in all samples (as a control defect). The amount of bone formation was evaluated 3 months after surgery histopathologically. The data were analyzed using Friedman test, and when P-value was less than 0.05, the pair wise group comparison were performed by Wilcoxon (Boneferroni adjusted) test.

Results: Statistical analysis showed that there was a significant difference between bovine DBM group with control group (P=0.03). Furthermore, human DBM group was significantly different from control group (P=0.02). However, the difference between bovine DBM group and human DBM group was not statistically significant (P=0.87).

Conclusion: The results of this study showed the satisfactory bone healing in rabbit parietal bone defects filled with bovine DBM. The amount of healing in these defects was similar to bone defects which were filled with human DBM that is used clinically.