Summary:
Purpose:
To evaluate the apical root canal microbiome of teeth with post-treatment apical periodontitis.
N= 10 Apical root specimens
Materials/Methods:
•Apical root specimens obtained during periradicular surgery were cryogenically ground.
•DNA was extracted from the powder and the microbiome was characterized using a next-generation DNA sequencing (NGS) approaches (Illumina sequencing)
Most highlighted Results:
•All samples were positive for the presence of bacterial DNA
•Over 85% of the sequences belonged to 4 phyla: Proteobacteria (46%), Firmicutes (18%), Fusobacteria (15%) and Actinobacteria (8%) (Fig 1) •Proteobacteria was the most abundant phylum in 6/10 samples.
•Fusobacteria dominated 2 samples, and Firmicutes and Actinobacteria were the most dominant in 1 sample each
•Enterococcus was found in 4 cases, always in relatively low abundance
•Clinical significance
•The persistent apical periodontitis characterized by multispecies bacterial communities and has a heterogeneous etiology, because the community composition largely varied from case to case.
