AIIMS Delhi Trial: Microneedling With Vitamin C Lightens Dark Gums, but the Scalpel Still Wins

Vitamin C is best known on this site as a face serum ingredient, but dentists also use it to lighten gums. A randomised clinical trial from the periodontics division at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, published in the September-October 2026 issue of the Journal of Oral Biology and Craniofacial Research, compared two ways of treating naturally dark (physiologic) gum pigmentation in the upper jaw.

Twenty-six adults were split evenly between the two treatments. One group had the conventional approach: the pigmented surface layer of the gum was removed with a scalpel in a single session. The other group had three weekly sessions of automated microneedling, after which a cotton roll soaked in an ascorbic acid solution was held on the gum for ten minutes. The needle depth was set for each tooth according to how thick the gum was. Twenty-three participants, most of them women in their early twenties, completed six months of follow-up. The trial was registered with India's clinical trials registry (CTRI) and the authors report it was self-funded.

Both treatments reduced pigmentation clearly at one month, and satisfaction with the colour change was high in both groups. But on the main pigmentation score the scalpel group did better at one month, and stayed lighter at three and six months. Colour returned to some extent in both groups, and some sites in the microneedling group never cleared fully. Pain scores were low throughout; scalpel patients reported somewhat more discomfort, significantly so only on day three. Six people in the microneedling group needed extra injected anaesthetic, and one developed a small gum abscess that resolved within a week. Gum thickness increased in the microneedling group by six months, which the authors link to collagen stimulation.

The authors list real limits: a small sample, short follow-up, unequal treatment (three sessions against one), and no group that received microneedling alone or vitamin C alone. That last point means the trial cannot say how much of the effect came from the ascorbic acid itself. The vitamin C used here was a concentrated clinical solution applied by a periodontist after needling, which is not the same as using a vitamin C face serum at home. Nothing in this study suggests putting skincare products on your gums.