Fig. 2.
Cumulative mean counts (× 105) of 41 bacterial species in supragingival samples taken from 38 periodontally healthy and 17 subjects with periodontitis prior to professional removal of the dental biofilms, immediately after cleaning, and after 1, 2, 4 and 7 days of re-development. The subjects refrained from oral hygiene procedures for the 7 day test period. Samples were removed from the mesio-buccal aspect of each tooth (excluding third molars) pre-cleaning and immediately post-cleaning. In addition, supragingival samples were obtained from up to 7 teeth in randomly selected quadrants at 1, 2, 4 and 7 days after tooth cleaning. All samples were individually analyzed for their content of 41 taxa using checkerboard DNA-DNA hybridization. Species counts in the samples were averaged within each subject at each time point and then averaged across subjects in the 2 clinical groups. The plots present the cumulative mean values at each time point in each clinical group. The species were ordered and color-coded according to previously described microbial complexes (Socransky et al. 1998).