Clinical effectiveness of essential oil-containing dentifrices in controlling oral malodor.

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Dentifrices in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are adults, both men and women.

To insure a homogeneous test population with similar oral odor characteristics, subjects followed instructions that included toothbrushing with a standard ADA-accepted fluoride dentifrice the night before.

On odor evaluation days, subjects refrained from all oral hygiene procedures and from eating or drinking any food or beverage or smoking prior to and during the odor evaluations.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized, single-blind and parallel-group study.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Dentifrices and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Only one side, usually the participants, was kept unaware of whether Dentifrices was given.

The Dentifrices group and the comparison group ran side by side rather than switching.

Two clinical trials were conducted which used observer-blind, negative control, parallel designs.

Eighty healthy adult subjects in the first trial and 90 in the second trial with qualifying baseline levels of oral malodor participated.

Odor ratings of each subject's breath were made by 4-5 trained judges using a nine point hedonic scale, i.e., 1 = most pleasant, 5 = neutral, 9 = most unpleasant.

Qualifying subjects were randomly assigned one of two essential oil dentifrices or a negative control dentifrice.

Data were analyzed using an ANCOVA to adjust for baseline scores.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Analysis of Variance, Anti-Infective Agents, Local, Citric Acid, Dentifrices, Halitosis, Observer Variation and Oils, Volatile.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, single-blind and parallel-group study of Dentifrices.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 1 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2000 (American journal of dentistry), a journal based in United States.

More context: all human trials.