Table 6.

Spearman’s rank-order correlation between clinical and microbiological data. Results presented as correlation coefficient r_s; p value

Clinical data	Bacteria spp.	Presence of bacteria (rs; p)	Counts of bacteria (rs; p)
DMFT	Total bacteria	NS	NS
	S. mutans	0.271; 0.004	0.308; 0.001
	S. sobrinus	NS	NS
	A. actinomycetemcomitans	NS	NS
	Enterobacter sp.		−0.28; 0.010
	Lactobacillus sp.		0.27; 0.012
DMFS	Total bacteria	NS	NS
	S. mutans	0.248; 0.009	0.306; 0.001
	S. sobrinus	NS	NS
	A. actinomycetemcomitans	NS	NS
	Bergeyella sp.		0.21; 0.049
	Capnocytophaga sp.		0.23; 0.039
	Enterobacter sp.		−0.30; 0.005
	Lactobacillus sp		0.34; 0.001

NS – not significant

Total bacteria, S. mutans, S. sobrinus and A. actinomycetemcomitans were detected using qPCR method while other bacteria using high-throughput sequencing