Burning mouth syndrome and personality profiles

The burning mouth syndrome (BMS) is an oral disorder that consists of a burning pain in the mouth without any visible clinical manifestations: its etiology is still unclear and the etiological factors have been classified as local, systemic and psychogenic. In this study, we reported the evaluation of the psychological profile of BMS and non-BMS subjects in order to identify any psychological disease affecting these patients and to evaluate a possible psychological factor in the ethiopathogenesis of BMS.

Twenty-eight patients affected by BMS, evaluated at the Section of Dentistry of the University of Parma, and 24 matched control subjects were evaluated for their personality profile using the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2), a questionnaire which analyses various aspects of personality through 10 scales: hypochondriasis, depression, hysteria, psychopathic deviation, masculinity-femininity, paranoia, psychasthenia, schizophrenia, hypomania, social introversion. From this study, 7 BMS patients and 12 control subjects were excluded due to high scores reported in one or more of the 3 control scales. The t-test and the Mann-Whitney test were used to compare the 2 groups and the results were considered statistically significant with P<0.01.

The results show no significant differences in personality profiles between the BMS and the control subjects suggesting an etiology for BMS different from the psychogenic hypothesis.

Further researches and the evaluation of larger BMS subjects groups are necessary in order to validate the hypothesis of the neurological etiology of BMS.