The determination of bacteria associated with periodontal disease is a common method to facilitate the decision for a possible antibiotic therapy additionally to conservative periodontal treatment. Currently this is mostly performed by inserting paper points in the periodontal pocket after supragingival plaque removal, drainage and collection of a pooled sample. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the microbial analysis of saliva samples is correlating with the much more intricate paper point method.
Methods:
Seventy-five patients with chronic and aggressive periodontitis participated in saliva and subgingival plaque sampling before conservative periodontal therapy. For the stimulated saliva collection, the “Saliva Collection System®” (Greiner Bio-One, Kremsmuenster, Austria) was used. Twenty-one different bacteria were extracted from the samples and determined by PCR “ParoCheck®”(Lambda, Rainbach, Austria) and a correlation analysis between the two methods was performed for each bacterial species.
Results:
The semi-quantitative analysis of Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans (A.a.), Porphyromonas gingivalis (P.g.), Tannerella forsythia (T.f.) and Treponema denticola (T.d.) as well as 14 other bacterial species showed a significant correlation between the saliva and subgingival plaque samples (Spearman's rho: 0.237-0.797; p < 0.05). Yet, the red complex (P.g., T.d., T.f.) was detected more frequently in subgingival plaque samples compared to the saliva samples.
Conclusions:
The identification of periodontopathic bacteria in saliva is largely equivalent to the already established subgingival sample collection. Salivary diagnostics could be used for the screening of periodontal disease by combining the determination of bacteria and periodontal disease-associated biomarkers. Nevertheless, the accurate microbial analysis of single sites is still only possible by paper point sampling in the periodontal pocket.