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Abstract

Despite the global public health importance of dental caries, it is greatly understudied. This study investigates the incidence and prevalent bacteria species in dental carries among patients attending dental clinic in Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital, Irrua, Nigeria. Patients presenting with signs, symptoms and suspected cases of dental caries attending dental clinic in the hospital between May and July 2017 were recruited. Following standard laboratory procedures, swabs were obtained, morphologically and biochemically analyzed and data subjected to simple statistical analysis. Of the 340 suspected cases, 65.59% were positive for bacteria (25.11% in children and 74.89% in adult). Females were more likely (1.23 times) to be affected and 2.98 times more common in adults than children. The prevalent bacteria isolated was (151; 67.7%), (36; 16.4%), (22; 9.9%), (10; 4.5%) and lastly (4; 1.8%). Biochemical characterization showed isolated Streptococus and Lactobacillus species were non-motile and negative to catalase, citrate, oxidase, indole and urease tests. This study showed the incidence of dental caries is high in the study area and that is the most causative bacteria.