Genetic Profiling of Serotype B Isolated from Periodontitis Patients Living in Sweden.

The bacterium is associated with aggressive forms of periodontitis and with systemic diseases, such as endocarditis. By assessing a Ghanaian longitudinal adolescent cohort, we earlier recognized the gene as a possible diagnostic marker for a subgroup of JP2 and non-JP2 genotype serotype b strains, associated with high leukotoxicity as determined in a semi-quantitative cell assay. This group of is associated with the progression of attachment loss. In the present work, we used conventional polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and quantitative PCR to perform the genotyping of our collection of 116 selected serotype b strains, collected over a period of 15 years from periodontitis patients living in Sweden. The strains carrying (referred to as ; n = 49) were compared to the -negative strains (n = 67), present at larger proportions in the subgingival plaque samples, and were also much more prevalent in the young (≤35 years) compared to in the old (>35 years) group of patients. Our present results underline the potential use of genotyping in the risk assessment of the development of periodontal attachment loss in Swedish adolescents.