Miswak, a chewing stick obtained from Salvadora persica, has been traditionally used in Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia and its use is well supported by religious as well as cultural beliefs. The Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) also commanded and supported the use of miswak. Recent studies have indicated that toothpastes and antibiotics that kill oral microbes show adverse side effects. In the present work, we examined the inhibition effectiveness of alcoholic and aqueous extracts of miswak, tested at different concentrations (5%-20% w/v), by spreading it by drill on the five isolates of oral pathogenic bacteria that includes, Streptococcus mutans, Actinomycetem comitans, Lactobacillus casei, Enterobacter aerogenes and Staphylococcus aureus. We observed that the alcoholic and aqueous extracts of Miswak inhibits the growth of all the pathogenic bacterial isolates as compared to control sample and the inhibition of bacterial isolates increased by using higher concentration of the miswak extracts. It was observed that the inhibition effect of the alcoholic extract was higher as compared to the inhibition effect of the aqueous extract for all isolates and at same concentrations. The highest inhibition (34%, 45%, 59% and 72%) was observed for Lactobacillus casei upon the treatment with alcoholic extract of concentration, 5%, 10%, 15% and 20% w/v respectively whereas the percent inhibition upon the application of aqueous extract was observed to be 25%, 41%, 66%, and 54.6% respectively for the same concentrations as mentioned above. The inhibition efficiency of the miswak extracts against Lactobacillus was closely followed by Streptococcus mutans where the inhibition percentage for alcoholic extract treatment was observed to be 28.5%, 38.7%, 51%, and 69.35 %, whereas the percent inhibition reached to 18.4%, 34.7%, 47% and 65.4% for aqueous extract at 5%,10%, 15%, 20% w/v concentrations respectively. On the other hand, Staphylococcus aureus showed the lowest percent inhibition (4.5%, 11.2%, 17.8%, and 44.4%) when treated with aqueous extract (5% - 20% w/v). This study has thus demonstrated the importance of miswak in the elimination of pathogenic bacteria present in the oral cavity. Therefore, more studies on miswak will definitely help to understand its importance in greater detail.
 

Download Full Text - PDF