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Review
. 2022 Oct 11;10(10):1991.
doi: 10.3390/healthcare10101991.

Effectiveness of Oil Pulling for Improving Oral Health: A Meta-Analysis

Tzu-Rong Peng  1 , Han-Yu Cheng  1 , Ta-Wei Wu  1 , Boon-Kok Ng  2
Affiliations
Review

Effectiveness of Oil Pulling for Improving Oral Health: A Meta-Analysis

Tzu-Rong Peng et al. Healthcare (Basel). .

Abstract

Objective: The effect of oil pulling on oral health has not yet been fully demonstrated. Therefore, we performed a meta-analysis to investigate the effect of oil pulling on oral health. Methods: We searched PubMed, the Cochrane Library, and the EMBASE database, limiting the search to human patients and articles written in English and published before 31 July 2022. We included randomized controlled trials (RCTs) comparing the effect of oil pulling on improving dental health and oral hygiene. The outcomes of this study were salivary bacteria count, plaque index, and gingival index. Results: In total, nine RCTs were included in this study. The study showed that salivary bacterial colony (BC) counts were significantly reduced in the oil pulling group compared to the control group [mean difference (MD): 17.55, 95% CI 2.56, 32.55]. There was no significant difference between the two groups (MD: -0.10, 95% CI -0.33, 0.14; -0.05, 95% CI -0.12, 0.02) in plaque index and gingival index score. Conclusions: Based on the results of this meta-analysis, the oil pulling may have a beneficial effect on reducing salivary BC count compared to the control group. There was no significant difference in the plaque index and gingival index score between the oil pulling and the control group. Therefore, future clinical trials should be more rigorous and better reported.

Keywords: dental health; effectiveness; oil pulling; oral hygiene.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) flow diagram for study selection.
Figure 2
Figure 2
The risk-of-bias assessment results of the nine included trials.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Forest plot for salivary Streptococcus mutans (SM) count.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Forest plot for the salivary bacterial colony (BC) count.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Forest plot for plaque index outcome.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Forest plot for gingival index outcome.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Funnel plot for plaque index outcome.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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