Oral Aggregations of Microbes

¹ Royal Dental School, Malmö, Sweden

Oral aggregations of microbes are found mainly in three locations—on those areas of the teeth not cleaned by mastication, in the gingival crevice, and on the tongue. The proportional distribution of various organisms is quite different, and saliva does not give a representative picture of the bacterial flora of the plaques. The number of bacteria in dental plaques and in scrapings from the gingival pocket seems to be of about the same order of magnitude, but the proportional distribution of various organisms seems to be quite different. This will probably imply great variations in metabolic activity. Very little is known about the numbers and distribution of various organisms on the normal tongue. It is obvious that the oral aggregations of microbes are of determinative importance for dental diseases, but their specific role in the dynamic host-microbial relationship is not properly understood.

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