EVALUATION OF THE ANTIFUNGAL EFFICACY BETWEEN DIFFERENT ESSENTIAL OILS INCORPORATED INTO DENTURE SOFT LINERS- A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW AND META-ANALYSIS

Purpose: The purpose of this systematic review is to evaluate the antifungal efficacy of different essential oils (EO)
incorporated into denture soft liners compared to conventional denture soft liners.
Materials and Methods: The review adhered to Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis
(PRISMA) 2020 guidelines and was registered in PROSPERO (CRDXXXX). A thorough search of databases was
conducted from January 2000 to September 2024 in PubMed, google scholar and EBSCO host to retrieve articles in the English language for comparative, in vitro and cross-sectional studies comparing essential oils incorporated into denture soft liners against C. albicans compared to conventional denture soft liners. Quality assessment was performed using. Cochrane risk of bias (ROB) -2 tool through Review Manager (RevMan) software version 5.3.
Results: Through search strategy a total of 39 articles were yielded. After screening titles and abstracts, 17 articles were further screened for full text. After critical analysis, according to the eligibility criteria of this review, 6 articles were included in this systematic review for data extraction. Six studies underwent qualitative synthesis and three studies for meta-analysis. Upon quality assessment, the studies demonstrated a range of moderate to low risk of bias. Meta-analysis showed that essential oils showed better zone of infection (ZOI) (SMD = 4.84 (2.14 – 7.53) and reduced surface roughness(SMD = -50.85 (-157.15 – 55.44). Funnel plot did not show any presence of possible publication bias in metaanalysis (p<0.05).
Conclusion: The study concluded that the addition of essential oils into denture soft tissue liners improved the overall
antifungal property, provided large cushioning effect with reduced damage to oral tissue and had shown more superior and effective results than systemic/natural agents.