OBJECTIVES Use of alternative medicine to control oral streptococci is a new topic worthy of further investigation. This study aimed to elucidate the dose-dependent anti-bacterial activity of crude aqueous extract of ripe Morinda citrifolia L. (Family: Rubiaceae) fruits against oral streptococci i.e. Streptococcus mutans and Streptococcus mitis, that cause dental caries in humans. METHODS Fre...

Seven streptococcal isolates from the mitis group were analyzed for the presence of pneumococcal gene homologues by comparative genomic hybridization studies with microarrays based on open reading frames from the genomes of Streptococcus pneumoniae TIGR4 and R6. The diversity of pneumolysin (ply) and neuraminidase A (nanA) gene sequences was explored in more detail in a collection of 14 S. pseu...

In this work, we studied the antimicrobial properties of a nanocomposite system based on a lactose-substituted chitosan and silver nanoparticles: Chitlac-nAg. Twofold serial dilutions of the colloidal Chitlac-nAg solution were both tested on Streptococcus mitis, Streptococcus mutans, and Streptococcus oralis planktonic phase and biofilm growth mode as well as on saliva samples. The minimum inhi...

Institute of Dental Research Westmead Millennium Institutes Westmead Centre for Oral Health PO Box 533 Wentworthville NSW 2145 Tel (02) 98458772 Fax (02) 98457599 E-mail: [email protected] Infective endocarditis (IE) is a life threatening, endovascular infection occurring when bacteria enter the blood stream and adhere to heart valves. Mortality rates remain in the range of 1127% ....

The non-hemolytic streptococci of the human throat form, simultaneously, one of the oldest and least known groups of the genus. These familiar but illdefined organisms are usually referred to as the "salivarius group," as "Streptococcus viridars" and "indifferent streptococci" according to the degree of greening produced in blood agar, or simply as the "mouth streptococcus." In their early clas...

OBJECTIVE Dental caries, periodontitis and other mucosal diseases are caused by a complex community of microorganisms. This study aimed to investigate the antimicrobial properties of saponins of four important oil yielding medicinal plant extracts on selected oral pathogens that are involved in such diseases. MATERIALS AND METHODS Saponins were extracted from Bauhinia purpurea, Madhuca longif...

It is difficult to separate Streptococcus pneumoniae from the genotypically similar species Streptococcus mitis and Streptococcus oralis, which are commensals of the human oral cavity. A novel nucleic acid amplification technique, loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP), which amplifies DNA under isothermal conditions (63 degrees C) with high specificity, efficiency, and rapidity, was exa...

It is important in order to advance the increasingly successful attack on subacute bacterial endocarditis to be able to produce the disease experimentally and to treat it with new and improved therapeutic regimens. Since endocarditis caused by Streptococcus mitis has not been consistently produced previously in the dog, a study was undertaken in which cardiovascular stress was created by the es...

The pioneer human oral commensal bacterium Streptococcus mitis has unique biologic features that make it an attractive mucosal vaccine or therapeutic delivery vector. S. mitis is safe as a natural persistent colonizer of the mouth, throat and nasopharynx and the oral commensal bacterium is capable of inducing mucosal antibody responses. A recombinant S. mitis (rS. mitis) that stably expresses H...