Methods: This was a controlled, randomized, two treatment, examiner-blind, five day parallel study. 40 healthy adults participated in this study. Subjects used a regular toothbrush and regular toothpaste for an acclimation phase of 2 days. For the treatment phase, the subjects were randomly divided in two groups: Super Thin Bristle toothbrush (experimental group) or Oral-B Complete Clean & Sensitive toothbrush (positive control group). Subjects used the products with a regular toothpaste in their customary manner twice per day during 5 days and overnight dental plaque formed was evaluated using the Turesky Modified Quigley-Hein Index before and after toothbrushing on Days 1 and 5. Pre and post brushing plaque scores were compared for each group using a paired t-test, and the plaque reduction was compared between the groups for Days 1 and 5.
Results: 30 female and 10 male completed the study and the mean (SD) age was 51.78 (6.61) years. For Day 1, the experimental and control group had dental plaque baseline values of 3.52 and 3.54 and the reductions from baseline were 0.44 and 0.45, respectively (p<0.0001). For Day 5, the experimental and the control group showed dental plaque pre-brushing values of 3.49 and 3.54, and the reductions were 0.39 and 0.36, respectively on Day 5 (p<0.0001). There were no significant differences in the reduction of dental plaque between the groups for Day 1 (p>0.88) or Day 5 (p>0.69).
Conclusion: The super thin bristle toothbrush removed dental plaque efficiently and was not statistically different to the positive control group.