Clonal Relationship within Two Oral Actinomyces Populations Collected from Plaque of Periodontitis Patients

Actinomyces naeslundii and A. oris are dental plaque formers involved in the pathogenesis of periodontitis. The aim of the study was to investigate the clonal relationship within two oral Actinomyces populations collected from plaque of patients with chronic periodontitis. The 223 clinical strains of A. naeslundii and A. oris were isolated from biofilm samples collected supra and subgingivally from teeth with shallow (probing depth (PD) = 3-4 mm), deep (PD = 5-6 mm) and very deep (PD ≥7 mm) pockets from 20 chronic periodontitis patients. All strains were submitted to repetitive sequence-based PCR typing using DiversiLab (BioMerieux,Marcy l´Étoile, France). Seven patients harboured only unrelated (<95% similarity) multiple isolates, while 13 harboured both similar (>95% similarity) and unrelated isolates at different sites. Identical (>98% similarity) strains were found to be present in the subgingival shallow depths more often than in the other subgingival depths. The number of clones in individual patients varied from 2 to 17 different rep-PCR genotypes. The clonal relationship within the oral populations of A. naeslundii and A. oris in an individual was unpredictable, ranging from the presence of multiple genotypes with no clonal similarity to only two different clones supra or subgingivally at different sites.