The comparative clinical efficacy of pyrophosphate/triclosan, copolymer/triclosan and zinc citrate/triclosan dentifrices for the reduction of supragingival calculus formation.

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial looks at Dentifrices and Triclosan.

A total of 544 subjects completed a double-blind parallel-group clinical study using the Volpe-Manhold Index (VMI) to record severity and occurrence of supragingival calculus.

Supragingival calculus formation was assesed at two and four months using site-specific and whole-mouth VMI indices for both calculus severity and occurrence.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 544 subjects taking part.

PubMed indexes the participants as teenagers, adults, middle-aged adults, older adults and people over 80, both men and women.

The study design included a pre-test period where the calculus formation rate was measured in subjects brushing with a placebo dentifrice.

How the Study Was Run

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

Because people in this Dentifrices study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

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

Some subjects received a placebo instead of Dentifrices, giving a reference point.

Groups ran in parallel: each of the subjects stayed in one arm throughout.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Analysis of Variance, Anti-Infective Agents, Local, Dental Calculus, Dentifrices, Diphosphates, Drug Combinations and Hydrogen Peroxide.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Dentifrices and Triclosan in 544 subjects.

With several hundred people or more, it is a fairly large study for this kind of research.

The publication is from 1997 (The Journal of clinical dentistry), a journal based in United States.

More context: all human trials.