[Salivary microbial communities associated with severe early childhood caries].

Objective: To compare the salivary microbial profiles of healthy subjects and those with severe early childhood caries (S-ECC) by using high-throughput sequencing.

Methods: Salivary samples were obtained from children with S-ECC (group C, n=24) and healthy children (group H, n=24). Total metagenomic DNA was extracted, and DNA amplicons of the V1-V3 hypervariable region of the 16S rRNA gene were generated and subjected to 454 sequencing.