Suárez Rodríguez, BertaRegueira Iglesias, AlbaBlanco Pintos, TrianaBalsa Castro, CarlosVila Blanco, NicolásCarreira Nouche, María JoséTomás Carmona, Inmaculada2025-04-232025-04-232023-08-12Suárez-Rodríguez, B., Regueira-Iglesias, A., Blanco-Pintos, T. et al. Short-term anti-plaque effect of a cymenol mouthwash analysed using the DenTiUS Deep Plaque software: a randomised clinical trial. BMC Oral Health 23, 560 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12903-023-03256-9https://hdl.handle.net/10347/40979Background The effect of cymenol mouthwashes on levels of dental plaque has not been evaluated thus far. Objective To analyse the short-term, in situ, anti-plaque effect of a 0.1% cymenol mouthwash using the DenTiUS Deep Plaque software. Methods Fifty orally healthy participants were distributed randomly into two groups: 24 received a cymenol mouthwash for eight days (test group A) and 26 a placebo mouthwash for four days and a cymenol mouthwash for a further four days thereafter (test group B). They were instructed not to perform other oral hygiene measures. On days 0, 4, and 8 of the experiment, a rinsing protocol for staining the dental plaque with sodium fluorescein was performed. Three intraoral photographs were taken per subject under ultraviolet light. The 504 images were analysed using the DenTiUS Deep Plaque software, and visible and total plaque indices were calculated (ClinicalTrials ID NCT05521230). Results On day 4, the percentage area of visible plaque was significantly lower in test group A than in test group B (absolute = 35.31 ± 14.93% vs. 46.57 ± 18.92%, p = 0.023; relative = 29.80 ± 13.97% vs. 40.53 ± 18.48%, p = 0.024). In comparison with the placebo, the cymenol mouthwash was found to have reduced the growth rate of the area of visible plaque in the first four days by 26% (absolute) to 28% (relative). On day 8, the percentage areas of both the visible and total plaque were significantly lower in test group A than in test group B (visible absolute = 44.79 ± 15.77% vs. 65.12 ± 16.37%, p < 0.001; visible relative = 39.27 ± 14.33% vs. 59.24 ± 16.90%, p < 0.001; total = 65.17 ± 9.73% vs. 74.52 ± 13.55%, p = 0.007). Accounting for the growth rate with the placebo mouthwash on day 4, the above results imply that the cymenol mouthwash in the last four days of the trial reduced the growth rate of the area of visible plaque (absolute and relative) by 53% (test group A) and 29% (test group B), and of the area of total plaque by 48% (test group A) and 41% (test group B). Conclusions The 0.1% cymenol mouthwash has a short-term anti-plaque effect in situ, strongly conditioning the rate of plaque growth, even in clinical situations with high levels of dental plaque accumulation.eng© The Author(s) 2023. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.Attribution 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/CymenolMouthwashDental plaqueOral healthPreventionImage analysisAutomated plaque quantificationjournal article10.1186/s12903-023-03256-9open access