Prescribing antibiotics with clindamycin strains without performing antibiotic susceptibility testing should be avoided for patients with periodontitis, according to research presented March 25 at the American Association of Dental, Oral, and Craniofacial Research annual meeting.
The meeting is being held in conjunction with the 46th Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association for Dental Research.
In a virtual presentation, Dr. Thomas Rams, PhD, from Temple University in Philadelphia discussed a study he conducted that suggests increased exposure to antibiotics has led to greater resistance in the human microbiome, including periodontal Porphyromonas gingivalis.
Rams and his team found that resistance of subgingival P. gingivalis increased fifteenfold to 9.3% of patients to clindamycin and twenty-eightfold to 2.8% of patients to amoxicillin. They found no significant changes, however, to resistance with doxycycline, metronidazole, or metronidazole plus amoxicillin.
