Objectives: The objective of the study was to evaluate the in vitro virucidal activity of commercial mouthwashes against SARS-CoV-2 and variants of concern.
Materials and methods: Antiviral activity was assessed at different time intervals, based on common use of these products by titrating residual viral infectivity on Vero E6 cells.
Results: All the mouthwashes were effective to reduce the infectious titers of SARS-CoV-2 and its tested variants. Mouthwashes Listerine® Cool Mint milder taste and Listerine® Cavity Protection milder taste reduced the infectious viral titer by up to 3.9 log10 after 30 s, while mouthwash Cetilsan® Sugar Free was able to reduce the viral titer by 2.2-2.9 log10 at all tested time intervals. Mouthwash Curasept® ADS DNA Intensive treatment was less effective to decrease viral infectivity (0.7-2.2 log10 TCID50/ml at all tested time intervals). Interestingly, the Gamma variant appeared more resistant to treatment in vitro with the different mouthwashes.
Conclusions: In this study, we were able to assess the ability of different mouthwashes to in vitro decrease the infectivity of SARS-CoV-2 and its variants, and we observed that Gamma variant of concern was more resistant to treatment with mouthwashes.
Keywords: in vitro; SARS-CoV-2; mouthwashes; variants; virucidal activity.
© 2022 The Authors. Oral Diseases published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.