Tongue twister

Research scientist Dr Paola Gomez-Pereira and her colleagues who work at Philips Research in Cambridge recently published a clinical trial article in the Journal of Breath Research which reviewed the effectiveness of a new sonic powered tongue brush and antibacterial spray combination, Sonicare TongueCare+. The TongueCare+ brush is combined with the BreathRx antibacterial spray to combat breath odour. The study monitored malodour levels and bacterial density for up to six hours by organoleptic scoring and bacterial density in the tongue.

Breath odour is a result of too many sulphur producing bacteria in the oral flora and is often associated with caries and periodontal disease. The root cause of breath odour actually comes from the bacterial tongue biofilm, as indicated by the positive correlation between bacterial density and organoleptic score, which was demonstrated in the published trial results.

It has been was observed that standard chemical and mechanical methods fail to deliver a full day of fresh breath; mouth rinses mask the volatile sulphur compounds but have little effect on the tongue bacterial density, whilst tongue scrapers and brushes only remove limited bacterial biofilms from the tongue complex surface.