ABSTRACT
Oral health influences general well-being and quality of life. Oral diseases can be debilitating and are amajor heath concern worldwide. Medicinal plants have been used for thousands of years for treatinghuman diseases. Considering the emergence of multi-drug resistant pathogens and financial difficultiesin developing countries, there is an urgent need for developing new antimicrobial compounds which aresafe, efficient and cost effective. Liquorice also known as yashtimadhu, sweetwood or mulhatti is onesuch herbal remedy which has shown to have immense potential in treatment of orofacial diseases.Liquorice is rich in secondary metabolites which are used in cosmetics, foods, traditional and modernmedicine. It has well known properties such as antiviral, glucocorticoid, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant,anti-ulcerative, anti-carcinogenic and many more. Liquorice extracts and liquorice bioactive ingredientssuch as glabridin, licoricidin, licorisoflavan A, licochalcone A, and glycyrrhizin have shown beneficialeffects in preventing and treating oral diseases. This paper reviews the effects of liquorice and its constituents on oral diseases such as dental caries, periodontitis, gingivitis, candidiasis, recurrent aphthousulcer and oral cancer and its use as a root canal medicament and summarizes the results of clinical trialsthat investigated the potential beneficial effects of liquorice and its constituents as a prevention andtreatment modality in oral diseases. Clinical trials, case reports and review of literature evaluating theeffect of liquorice on oral microorganisms and oral diseases are included. Literature pertaining to theeffects of liquorice on systemic diseases have been excluded from this review of literature.© 2018 Transdisciplinary University, Bangalore and World Ayurveda Foundation. Publishing Services byElsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).