Introduction: Lawsonia Inermis (LI) is a shrub cultivated throughout India. Many in vitro studies have been done on antifungal activity of LI, although none of the studies have been conducted invivo.
Aim: To evaluate the antifungal efficacy of ethanolic extract of crude lawsone in comparison with listerine mouth wash in known diabetics and wearing dentures.
Materials and methods: A total of 60 subjects were taken and randomly divided into two groups of 30 each. Group 1 received crude lawsone mouthwash and Group 2 received listerine mouth wash. Oral rinse technique was performed. Each subject was given distilled water at baseline and Colony Forming Units (CFU) of candidal species was determined. Post therapeutic samples were then collected 1hr and 1week following drug usage and they were further advised to use given mouth washes twice daily with volume of 5ml/rinse for 30 seconds and CFU was evaluated.
Results: Crude lawsone mouthwash showed superior antifungal activity when compared to listerine mouthwash. On individual comparison of both mouth washes at baseline, 1hr and 1week highly significant results were obtained using inferential statistics. The inter group comparison was done using independent t-test where lawsone was considered to be more effective in reducing CFU, at 1hr and 1week of using the mouth wash (p<0.01). Subjective symptoms like taste and smell were determined by chi square test where good taste was felt for lawsone and olfactory satisfaction was good with listerine (p<0.01). Burning sensation was found to be more with listerine mouth wash.
Conclusion: The present study revealed superior antifungal activity with ethanolic extract of crude lawsone mouth wash compared with listerine mouthwash.
Keywords: Diabetes mellitus; Lawsonia plant; Mouthwashes; Phytochemicals.