Comparison of Antiplaque Efficacy of Commercially Available HiOra (Herbal) Mouthwash with Listerine Mouthwash: A Clinical Study

Background. herbal mouthwashes nowadays are gaining popularity because they contain naturally occurring ingre-dients that achieve the desired antimicrobial and antiinflammatory effects. the aim of this study was to compare the effica-cy of a commercially available herbal mouthwash (hiora) with that of an essential oil-containing mouthwash, listerine. methods. a single-blind cross-over study was conducted on 30 dental students aged 18‒25 years. the subjects were ran-domly divided into two groups: a and b (n=15) and the study was divided into two phases. in phase 1, listerine mouth-wash was given to group a and hiora mouthwash to group b. the plaque score was recorded with turesky modification of the quigley–hein plaque index consecutively for 10 days. after 15 days of wash-out period, in phase 2 both groups were given the other mouthwash. results. the plaque scores were compared and the difference between the hiora and listerine mouthwash was deter-mined using wilcoxon and mann-whitney tests. the differences between plaque scores were statistically insignificant (p>0.05). the results showed that hiora and listerine mouthwashes yielded comparable results in plaque reduction. conclusion. herbal mouthwash was found to be a potent plaque inhibitor, yielding results comparable to those of listerine mouthwash. these formulations may be more appealing because they do not contain alcohol, artificial preservatives, flavors or colors.