REVIEW   

Minerva Dental and Oral Science 2021 October;70(5):206-13

DOI: 10.23736/S2724-6329.21.04418-6

Copyright © 2021 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

Effectiveness of mouthwash against viruses: 2020 perspective. A systematic review

Santosh K. VERMA ¹ ✉, Barun DEV KUMAR ², Akhilanand CHAURASIA ³, Deepyanti DUBEY ⁴

¹ Department of Periodontology and Oral Implantology, Dental Institute, RIMS, Ranchi, India; ² Department of Orthodontics, Dental Institute, RIMS, Ranchi, India; ³ Department of Oral Medicine and Radiology, King George Medical University, Lucknow, India; ⁴ Department of Conservative Dentistry and Endodontics, Hazaribag College of Dental Sciences and Hospital, Hazaribag, India

INTRODUCTION: Antiseptic mouthwash is widely recommended to treat various oral diseases as well as to improve oral health. Most of the dental procedures lead to the generation of aerosols. These aerosols have a high potential to transmit disease. Preprocedural oral rinse with antimicrobial agents in the form of mouthwashes reduces the bacterial and viral load many folds. The purpose of this review was to summarize the effectiveness of mouthwash against viruses affecting human beings.
EVIDENCE ACQUISITION: Search engines like PubMed, Google Scholar, and others were used to search the electronic database. Articles were identified in which the effectiveness of antiseptic mouth rinse against the virus was tested. A comprehensive search strategy was designed to select the articles and then independently screened for eligibility.
EVIDENCE SYNTHESIS: A total of 9624 articles out of the 13 titles met the eligibility criteria. The selected papers were included in the present manuscript according to their relevance to the topic. Authors searched the most used chemicals as mouthwashes but records of three types of mouthwash tested against various types of viruses i.e. chlorhexidine gluconate, Povidone-iodine and essential oil containing mouthwash (Listerine) were found.
CONCLUSIONS: Povidone-iodine mouth rinse is effective in reducing viral load either in-vitro or in-vivo conditions. Chlorhexidine gluconate mouthwash and essential oils have shown its effectiveness in a few studies. Insufficient evidence is available to support the claim that oral antiseptics can reduce the risk of developing viral loads in humans or the rate of progression of diseases caused by viruses.

KEY WORDS: Chlorhexidine gluconate; Viruses; Povidone-iodine; Coronavirus; Oils, volatile, COVID-19