Efficacy of Different Brands of Mouth Rinses on Oral Bacterial Load Count in Healthy Adults

A laboratory test was used to assess the inhibition of growth of oral bacteria by three modern commercial mouthrinses containing either cetylpridinium chloride, CPC (Macleans), phenolic compound (Colgate Plax) or glycerin/triclosan (Listerine); which were used unsupervised in a placebo-controlled study involving fortyfive healthy adults. Subjects were divided into 3 groups and their saliva samples were assessed for microbial counts at the beginning and the end of an eight-week period during which they rinsed with 10ml of mouthrinse for 15 seconds twice daily (morning and evening) in addition to their usual oral hygiene procedures.The results showed wide variations in their effectiveness: those containing CPC reduced oral microbial count significantly (P <0.05) than formulations based on phenols or glycerin/triclosan. This concludes that twice daily use of CPCcontaining mouthrinses reduce oral microbial load counts in healthy subjects when used as an adjunct to their normal oral hygiene procedures. This also suggests that inhibitory power of CPC is greater on oral microbes than other numerous functions of commercial mouthrinses.