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Pet owners love their dogs but may not always love the smell of their breath. Because this bad odor can signal oral disease, veterinary clinics will prescribe daily tooth brushing, antibiotics or chemical rinses as treatment. Now, researchers reporting in ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry propose an alternative: polyphenols from molasses. They developed a spray that reduced stinky breath and harmful oral bacteria in dogs.
“The spray itself has a mild plant-like and molasses-like smell, but it is not strong or unpleasant.” – Hongye Li
“Our goal was to investigate if a sustainable agricultural by-product could safely improve the daily oral health of our pets,” says Hongye Li, the lead author of the study.
Previously, Li and colleagues examined sugarcane molasses and determined that it contained polyphenols that prevented the growth of harmful oral bacteria in lab cultures. They saw an opportunity to investigate whether similar extracts could treat the bacteria that cause halitosis, or bad breath, in dogs. So, Li, Yin Fei and Wei Zhao recruited 10 healthy pet dogs with smelly breath (after getting consent from their owners) and tested how a molasses-derived mouth spray impacted the animals’ breath, oral microbiome and saliva composition.
