Overview
In the literature, many broad and specific speculations have been made as to the etiology of these conditions. Trauma, psychological distress, malocclusion, and parafunctional habits are considered to be some of the initiating, perpetuating, and predisposing factors for TMD. In a recent report, researchers identified several genes displaying preliminary evidence of association with TMD status. While this was the first genetic case-control study to discover this phenomenon, the authors provided tentative evidence that chronic TMD is influenced by genetic contributions within a number of loci. Gender differences, along with prevalence in age that peaks between years twenty and forty, were also documented. An ethnic and racial difference has also been identified in several studies and was discovered to show a lower prevalence in African Americans than Whites. The 1996 US National Institute of Health Technology Assessment Conference Statement on the Diagnosis and Management of TMD recommends that an ideal diagnostic classification system should be based on etiology. To this date, there has not been a systematic classification presented using those etiologies. To make matters worse, there has not been an agreement reached by clinicians who treat TMD.
Publications
- Chien YC, Seferovic D, Holland JN, Walji MF, Adibi SS. When should sleep bruxism be considered in the diagnosis of temporomandibular disorders? Oral Surg Oral Med Oral Pathol Oral Radiol. 2020 Dec;130(6):645-650. doi: 10.1016/j.oooo.2020.08.029. Epub 2020 Aug 29. PMID: 33032938.
