Antibacterial susceptibility patterns of Porphyromonas gingivalis isolated from chronic periodontitis patients.

OBJECTIVES

To test the antimicrobial sensitivity of Porphyromonas gingivalis to a panel of eight orally administrable antibiotics in chronic periodontal diseases and to evaluate factors associated with periodontitis in adult patients.

STUDY

DESIGN

A total of fifty strains of P. gingivalis were isolated from one hundred and twenty adult patients with chronic perio-dontitis. Identification of bacteria was carried out by anaerobic culture and biochemical tests. Selected colonies of P. gingivalis were used to evaluate the antibacterial activities of penicillin, metronidazole, amoxicillin, amoxicillin/clavulanic acid, clindamycin, doxy-cycline, ciprofloxacin and azithromycin.

RESULTS

Most of the patients were female, age ranging between 40 to 50 years. Majority of the patients frequently had scaling and depths of periodontal pockets in infected teeth were 5-8 mm and most of them had hemorrhage during sampling. Susceptibility testing revealed a sensitivity of 100% of P. gingivalis to azithromycin, doxycycline and amoxicillin/clavulanic acid but lower susceptibilities were found for the rest of antibiotic agents evaluated.

CONCLUSIONS

Frequent scaling in women aged between 40-50 years had positive correlation with chronic periodontitis. The application of antibiotics in conjuction with mechanical debridation, may reflect in the level of resistance of P. gingivalis in patients with chronic periodontal infections. This could suggest periodical antibiotic susceptibility testing is necessary to determine the efficacy of antimicrobial agents if the perfect curing of chronic periodontal diseases after mechanical debridation is meant. Further clinical studies are required to confirm the in vitro results. The only limitation in this study was identification of bacteria to species rather than subspecies level.