Assessment of Antibiotics and Fluoride Toothpastes against Pathogenic Bacteria associated with Dental Caries

Dental caries is the most contagious disease throughout the world. Inthe present study, a total of 100 dental caries patients were selected andsamples from these patients were collected through sterile pincers formicrobiological examination. A total of 9 different pathogenic bacterialisolates were identified through conventional culturing technique andamong them maximum number of occurrence was by Salmonella spp(26.13%), followed by E. coli (17.39%), Proteus spp (17.39%), Shigella spp(8.69%), Pseudomonas spp (8.69%), Vibrio spp (8.69%), Enterobacter spp(4.34%), Yersinia spp (4.34%) and S. mutans (4.34%). Furthermore,antibiotic susceptibility tests were performed by 9 differentcommercially available antibiotics i.e. vancomycin, erythromycin,clindamycin, amoxicillin, tetracycline, rifampicin, ampicillin, ticarcillinand metronidazole/silver sulphadizine. Kirby Bauer disc diffusionmethod was used against test organisms and it was observed that allthese antibiotics expressed significant activity against greater part of testorganisms but few of them showed resistance to metronidazole/silversulphadizine. In addition to this, different toothpastes encoded as TP-1,TP-2, TP-3, TP-4 and TP-5 were used at a concentration of 20 mg/mL inorder to evaluate their activity against test organisms and it wasobserved that all these toothpastes showed significant activity againstisolated bacteria. It was concluded that all these toothpastes containedfluoride which supports to avoid tooth decay and promote minty freshbreath. Furthermore, it was recommended that avoid usage of too muchsweets, chocolates, candies especially in children/adults, and there mustbe a proper use of toothpastes twice a day at every stage of life.Keywords: Dental Caries, Pathogenic Bacteria, Antibiotics, FluorideToothpastes