The efficacy of amine fluoride/stannous fluoride in the suppression of morning breath odour.

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Cetylpyridinium and Chlorhexidine in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Breath odour is a complaint encountered worldwide, often linked to microbial overload in the oral cavity.

Who Took Part

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were adults, both men and women.

Sixteen dental students with a healthy periodontium abolished, after a thorough professional cleaning, all means of mechanical plaque control during five experimental periods of 7 days, interleaved by washout periods of at least 3 weeks.

At days 0, 3 and 7, morning breath was scored via VSC level measurements of the mouth air, and organoleptic ratings of the mouth air and tongue coating.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled and crossover study.

The participants were allocated by chance, so the Cetylpyridinium group and the comparison group should start out alike.

Neither the participants nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Cetylpyridinium, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Cetylpyridinium could be set against what happens without it.

In the crossover set-up each of the participants took both Cetylpyridinium and the comparison in turn, acting as their own control.

At the end of each period a questionnaire for subjective ratings was completed and microbiological samples were taken from the tongue dorsum, the saliva and the supragingival plaque for anaerobic and aerobic culturing.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Anti-Infective Agents, Local, Cetylpyridinium, Chlorhexidine, Circadian Rhythm, Dental Plaque, Drug Combinations and Fluorides, Topical.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Cetylpyridinium and Chlorhexidine.

Results are reported in around 10 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2002 (Journal of clinical periodontology), a journal based in United States.

More context: all human trials.