Fig 1.
Flowchart of experimental design.
Table 1.
Species-specific primers used in the real-time PCR.
Fig 2.
Box plots of (A) H2S, (B) CH3SH, and (C) (CH3)2S produced by the volunteers in the “Stressed” and “Not stressed” groups. Box plot explanation: upper horizontal line of box, maximum; lower horizontal line of box, minimum; horizontal bar within box, median; upper horizontal bar outside box, 75th percentile; lower horizontal bar outside box, 25th percentile. Mann-Whitney test, * p < 0.05.
Fig 3.
Box plots of (A) total bacterial counts, and the relative proportions (percentage of the total bacteria) of (B) A. odontolyticus, (C) S. moorei, (D) V. dispar, (E) F. nucleatum, (F) T. denticola, and (G) T. forsythia in the saliva of volunteers from the “Stressed” and “Not stressed” groups. Box plot explanation: upper horizontal line of box, maximum; lower horizontal line of box, minimum; horizontal bar within box, median; upper horizontal bar outside box, 75th percentile; lower horizontal bar outside box, 25th percentile. Mann-Whitney test, * p < 0.05.
Table 2.
Correlation coefficients (rS) between H2S, CH3SH, and (CH3)2S and the relative proportions of A. odontolyticus, F. nucleatum, S. moorei, T. denticola, T. forsythia, and V. dispar in the saliva of subjects from the “Stressed” and “Not stressed” groups.
Table 3.
Correlation coefficients (rS) between the relative proportions of S. moorei or F. nucleatum and the relative proportions of A. odontolyticus (Ao), T. denticola (Td), T. forsythia (Tf), and V. dispar (Vd), for the “Stressed” and “Not stressed” groups.
Fig 4.
Means and standard deviations for the in vitro production of H2S (ppb) by S. moorei (Sm), F. nucleatum (Fn) and the H2S production by Sm and Fn when they were grown together (Sm & Fn).
Different letters indicate statistically significant differences between groups (ANOVA and Tukey’s test, p < 0.05).