Suspected periodontopathic microorganisms and their oral habitats in young children

Abstract

Samples of subgingival plaque from 67 children, 5-7 years of age, were examined for the presence of certain suspected periodontal pathogenic species using the conventional technique of anaerobic sonification, dilution and spiral plating. When this technique was compared with a direct plating procedure which involved no preliminary dispersion and dilution of plaque specimens, it was found that the direct method resulted in double the frequency of children in whom black-pigmented Bacteroides (BPB) were detected and a 10-times increase in the number of subjects harbouring Actinobacillus actinomycetemcomitans. Samples from the tongue, tonsils and saliva were also plated using the direct technique. BPB were detected less commonly in the plaque specimens (61.3% of children) than in saliva (89.5%), or on the tongue (86.6%) and tonsils (97.1%). Expressed as percentages of a pooled sample of the total BPB population, the most frequently detected species in plaque were Bacteroides intermedius (44.4%) and Bacteroides melaninogenicus (48.0%). The most prevalent isolate in all other oral sites was B. melaninogenicus. Expressed as percentages of children in whom BPB were detected, the most frequently isolated species from plaque using the conventional dilution technique was B. intermedius (21.3%), whereas other BPB species were present in fewer than 5% of children. Fusobacterium nucleatum and Capnocytophaga species were isolated most frequently from plaque but were also commonly detected in the various other oral sites.

The Bacteriology of the Supragingival Plaque of Child Dental Patients in Kuwait

“…Our study demonstrates a high isolation rate of black-pigmented Prevotella spp., followed by the Fusobacterium spp., which, conceivably, suggests the attainment of the developing stage of the plaque in most of our subjects (table 3). These findings are in accord with many previous reports that found as many as 61% of children aged 5-7 years harboring black-pigmented gram-negative anaerobes [9][10][11]. P. intermedia was the predominant anaerobic species (table 4), a finding which further supports the fact that the plaque covering the teeth of children in Kuwait are in the developing stage.…”

Persistent Colonization with Tannerella forsythensis and Loss of Attachment in Adolescents

“…Colonization of the oral cavity by many putative periodontopathogens can occur quite early in childhood without clinical signs of periodontal disease (Delaney and Kornman, 1987;Frisken et al, 1987;Sweeney et al, 1987;Conrads et al, 1996). Recently, investigators have determined the prevalence of 10 oral organisms, including T. forsythensis, in children who showed negligible periodontal inflammation, in an attempt to delineate the prevalence and distribution of these pathogens in a 'healthy' population (Kimura et al, 2002).…”

Intracellular Actinobacillus actinomycetemcomitans and Porphyromonas gingivalis in Buccal Epithelial Cells Collected from Human Subjects

“…Potential mucosal invaders may include P. intermedia and F. nucleatum. Both those species have been cultured from mucosae of predentate, dentate, and edentulous subjects (8,12,13), and both recently have been shown to invade epithelial cells in vitro (11,14). B. forsythus has shown only a weak tendency to invade cells in tissue culture (14).…”