Association of Enterococcus faecalis with Different Forms of Dental Diseases among Patients Visiting a Tertiary Hospital in Ekiti State, Nigeria

Aims: The implication of Enterococcus faecalis in dental infections is rising and resistance to common antibiotics continues to rise globally as well. In this study, the association of E. faecalis with different forms of dental infections was investigated and the antibiotic resistance profile of the isolates was determined.
Place and Duration of Study: The samples were collected from a tertiary health institution in Ekiti State, transferred to the Department of Microbiology, Ekiti State University, Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria and processed immediately. This study was carried out between June, 2009 and March, 2010.
Methodology: Oral interview was conducted among the patients in order to collect relevant data while sterile culturette was used to collect the samples after proper diagnoses, plated and incubated appropriately using standard microbiological techniques. The susceptibility of the isolates to commonly and frequently used antibiotics was determined by the disc diffusion method on Müller-Hinton agar.
Results: Overall, 46.0% of the subjects had dental infections The subjects with dental infections were 46.60% males and 53.40% females. Students accounted for 58.25% of the total subjects followed by traders with 16.50%. Enterococcus faecalis was isolated from 52.08% of the students, 22.92% traders and 4.17% of the farmers. The highest occurrence (37.86%) of dental infection was recorded among patients within the age bracket 21 and 30 years while dento-aveola abscess (DAA) followed by dental caries (DC) were the predominant dental infections recorded in that order. A total of 46.60% of the dental infections were colonized by E. faecalis that were mostly resistant to amoxicillin (93.90%) and cloxacillin (92.68%). Resistance to the fluoroquinolones tested was relatively low, ranging from 8.54 to 25.61% in spafloxacin and perfloxacin, respectively whilst it was 1.22% to vancomycin among the isolates.
Conclusion: The isolates were resistant to common antibiotics tested, however, vancomycin proved to be the most effective in the inhibition of the isolates.