Periodontal disease is a chronic inflammation of the periodontal tissues and is the
most common cause of tooth loss in adulthood. The formation of complex dental
plaque and the presence of periodontal bacteria are the main reasons for the
development of the disease. A more aggressive course is often associated with
bacterium P. gingivalis and it's virulence factors. The aim of our work was to
design specific oligonucleotides (primers) for a set of virulence determinants and to
identify their presence and prevalence in clinical isolates from Slovenian patients
with periodontitis using the PCR method. In 53 clinical isolates, we determined a
high percentage of virulence factors that affect the extracellular matrix,
erythrocytes, and host cell signaling. The greatest differences in prevalence were
observed in virulence factors for adhesion. The majority of patients with advanced
periodontitis carried the genetic variant of long fimbriae fimA II (83 %) but only 3,8
% the fimA V variant, between which we also confirmed a statistically significant
negative correlation (p-value < 0,001). In individual isolates we discovered a
relatively high procentage (60, 4 %) of multiple genotypes of fimA, which can most
likely be attributed to different strains of P. gingivalis in each sample. In
conclusion, long fimbriae FimA represent a potentially interesting area for further
research in relation to more aggressive forms of periodontal disease, with the use of
the PCR method being unreliable due to the possibility of false positive results.
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