Potential of avocado seed extract mouthwash in preventing dental caries: A literature review

Background: Dental caries is an oral disease caused by low awareness of oral health with high prevalence in Indonesia varying from children to adults. Chlorhexidine has been used as mouthwash to kill dental caries bacteria such as Streptococcus mutans and Prevotella intermedia in the oral cavity but it has many side effects in a long term use. Extraction of avocado seeds by maceration method in dilution with ethanol 70% could present bioactive compounds which have a similar role as conventional chlorhexidine mouthwash.
Purpose: To explain potencies of avocado seed extracts as mouthwash for dental caries prevention.
Method: Study based on past literature with publication age under or at least five years ago conducted from ResearchGate, ScienceDirect, PubMed, and Google Scholar according to related keywords and being selected so that the information collected could be relevant to the topic of the article.
Discussion: Avocado seed extracts that have been manipulated to be mouthwash sample could present inhibition activity to bacteria colony in petri dish by the same level as chlorhexidine as well with a minimum extract concentration of under 35%, thus cytotoxicity value of avocado seed extracts in parameter of IC50 is 77.298 ug/mL which is non-toxic so that the extracts give a good potency as therapeutic mouthwash to dental caries by causing no systemic side effects.
Conclusion: Avocado seed extracts-based mouthwash has potency as prevention to dental caries without other systemic side effects.