“…Oral viridans streptococci are pathogens associated with infective endocarditis, and the binding abilities of these organisms to subendothelial matrix proteins including collagen, sialoproteins, fibronectin, and laminin, as well as blood-derived fibrinogen (fibrin), are regarded as potential virulence factors (Sommer et al, 1992;Sciotti et al, 1997;Chia et al, 2000;Beg et al, 2002;Takahashi et al, 2002). Although S. mutans was reported to be responsible for 8-18% of total streptococcal endocarditis (Ryd et al, 1996), and extracellular protein antigen I/II was reported to be involved in binding of S. mutans cells to extracellular matrix protein (Love et al, 2000;Beg et al, 2002), including collagen, it has often been questioned whether S. mutans is a true pathogen in endocarditis.…”