Effects of Green Tea on Streptococcus mutans Counts- A Randomised Control Trail

Mouth rinses have been in use from time immemorial as a supplement for routine oral hygiene. There are many number of mouth rinses currently available in the market in which many of them possess certain drawback, which has necessitated the search for alternate mouth rinses. The aim of the present study was to assess the effect of rinsing with green tea in comparison with chlorhexidine and plain water on Streptococcus mutans count. A short term, single blinded, cross over randomised control clinical trial. Study includes a total of 30 subjects aged 20 to 25 years divided into three groups that is green tea group, chlorhexidine group, and plain water group. A baseline plaque samples were collected and under supervision of examiner all the subjects rinsed with 10 ml of respective solutions for one minute. Plaque samples were collected at five minutes after rinsing. All the 30 subjects were exposed to all the three rinses with a wash out period of seven days between the interventions. All the samples were sent to microbial analysis. Wilcoxon matched pair test and Mann-Whitney U test showed that both chlorhexidine and green tea significantly reduced Streptococcus mutans colony counts compared to plain water. The results of present study indicate that green tea mouth rinse proved to be equally effective compared to chlorhexidine which is considered as gold standard. This may also be a valuable public health intervention as it is economical and has multiple health benefits.