Improvement in Gingivitis by Essential-oils Containing Mouthrinses: a Secondary Analysis

Objective: The primary objective of this novel secondary analysis was to interpret existing clinical gingivitis data using a categorical index, the Modified Gingival Index (MGI), and determine the incidence of healthy gingival tissues over time with brushing and rinsing with an essential oil-containing mouthrinse compared to just the mechanical procedure of brushing alone.  

Method: The MGI uses a scale of 0-4 (absence to severe inflammation).  During categorization, the index was split into two categories: scores 0 or 1 (healthy, very mild to no inflammation) and >=2 (mild to severe inflammation).  For each treatment group at any timepoint, the percent of subjects scored ‘healthy’ was plotted by each gingival site scored and the incidence of ‘Health (scores of 0 or 1)’ among the 108 sites, defined as the number of sites where a majority (>50%) of subjects scored healthy, was calculated.   Data from 2 previous long-term studies were evaluated.  The treatment groups assessed were Brushing Alone (B) and Brushing and rinsing with an essential oil-containing mouthrinse (BR).

Result: At baseline of Study 1 none of the sites in the mouth were considered healthy for the majority of subjects. For study 2, up to 3% of the sites were healthy for the same criteria. Six Month data from study 1 showed an improvement in the BR group, with an incidence of 30% sites with ‘health’, while the B group showed 0% incidence. The incidence of ‘health’ for study 2 was 79% for BR and 4% for B.

Conclusion: The results of this analysis demonstrated that adding an essential oil-containing mouthrinse to mechanical hygiene (brushing alone) not only contributes to a substantial improvement in gingival health and but brings a substantial portion of the mouth to a healthy state in over half of the subjects in the EO treated groups.