Evaluating the prevalence of temporomandibular joint abnormalities in postmenopausal women

• Published in: Eurasian journal of biosciences Vol. 13; no. 2; pp. 1383 - 1390
• Main Authors: Babouei, Moslem, Farzin, Mitra, Vejdani, Mahroo, Azadi, Arash, Moayedi, Ibrahim
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Izmir Foundation for Environmental Protection and Research, Çevre Koruma ve Araştırma Vakfı (ÇEVKOR) 01-08-2019
• Subjects: Age; Arthritis; Child development; Dental prosthetics; Dentistry; Disease; Estrogens; Hormone replacement therapy; Jaw; Mandible; Menopause; Orthodontics; Osteoporosis; Pain; Post-menopause; Puberty; Sex hormones; Statistical analysis; Studies; Temporomandibular joint; Temporomandibular joint disorders; Trauma; Womens health; United States > US
• ISSN: 1307-9867

Introduction: Regarding the results from various and diverse reports on the relationship between sex hormones, especially estrogen, and the prevalence of TMD and its associated symptoms, it is quite clear that there are very contradictory and misleading results on the role of estrogen in the incidence of TMD and its associated symptoms in women before puberty, during puberty, before menopause, during and after menopause, which call for more quantitative and qualitative studies to be conducted. Therefore, we decided to conduct a study with the aim of evaluating the relationship between the presence of menopause and its absence with the prevalence of clinical symptoms of temporomandibular joint problems in patients requiring prosthesis who visited the Dental Prosthetics Department of School of Dentistry of Shiraz University. Material and Methods: This is a cross-sectional, descriptive and analytical study. In this study, 140 women aged 45-55 years were examined. Of these, 71 were postmenopausal women and 69 were non-menopausal. These subject had no history of trauma, jaw abnormalities and orthodontics. The Helkimo's clinical index was used to measure the severity of TMJ dysfunction, and the data obtained were analyzed using Chi-square and Mann-Whitney tests and the statistical software of SPSS. Findings: The mean age for non-menopausal women was 46.87 and for postmenopausal women was 51.43. Among the symptoms examined, there was no significant relationship in the range of motion of mandible (P<0.187), however, the rest were significant. The most common symptom in postmenopausal women was dysfunction in TMJ function (33.3). Discussion and Conclusion: This study showed that TMJ problems are one of the complications associated with menopause; therefore, this complication should be considered along with other problems such as joint arthritis and osteoporosis that are more prevalent during menopause phase and middle age, and appropriate dental treatments should be perform with respect to this issue.