Evaluation of universal probes and primer sets for assessing total bacterial load in clinical samples: general implications and practical use in endodontic antimicrobial therapy.

By re-examining 10 previously published "universal" PCR assays using the ARB phylogenetic software package and database with 41,000 16S rRNA gene sequences, we found that they differed considerably in their coverage of the domain Bacteria. We evaluated the broadest-range real-time quantitative PCR protocol for its efficacy in measuring the antimicrobial effects of endodontic treatments.