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In recent years, increasing evidence regarding the potential association between periodontal diseases and cardiovascular diseases has been identified. The available evidence underlines the importance of detecting periodontal pathogens on atheromatous plaque as the first step in demonstrating the causal relationship between the two conditions. The main aim of this investigation is to detect periodontitis-associated bacteria from carotid artery atheromatous plaque from patients who received an endarterectomy using strict sample procurement and laboratory procedures.
Atheromatous plaque from endarterectomies from carotid arteries were scraped and homogenized, and bacterial DNA was extracted. To obtain a representative concentration of amplicons, two amplifications of the bacterial 16S ribosomal-RNA gene were carried out for each sample with universal eubacteria primers by a polymerase chain reaction (PCR). A nested PCR with specific primers for the target bacteria was performed next. Statistical tests included the x2 test.