Morning breath odor: Influence of treatments on sulfur gases

We assessed the effects of several treatments on the concentrations of oral sulfur-containing gases, compounds thought to be responsible for morning b reath. Upon awakening in the morning, healthy volunteers collected oral gas samples before and for eight hours after the following treatments: no trea tment, brushing the teeth with toothpaste, brushing the tongue, rinsing wit h 5 mL of 3% hydrogen peroxide, breakfast ingestion, or swallowing two Brea thAsure(R) capsules. The gas samples were analyzed for sulfur-containing vo latiles via gas chromatography. Baseline collections usually contained thre e sulfur gases: hydrogen sulfide, methanethiol, and dimethylsulfide. The ef fectiveness of a treatment was determined via comparison of the areas under gas concentrations-time curves with and without treatment. Brushing the te eth or ingestion of BreathAsureR had no apparent influence on the sulfur ga ses. Ingestion of breakfast and tongue brushing resulted in strong trends t oward decreased sulfur gases. Hydrogen peroxide significantly reduced the s ulfur gas concentrations for eight hours.