Taste is improved with reduction in reported pain in burning mouth syndrome

Abstract

Objective Burning mouth syndrome (BMS) is commonly associated with complaints of dysgeusia or phantogeusia and a burning pain sensation that typically increases in intensity over the day. Previous studies have documented taste changes in BMS. This study was designed to compare taste perception before and after successful treatment in BMS. Study Design A retrospective study was conducted at a private oral medicine clinic. Thirty-two patients diagnosed with primary BMS, who had spatial taste testing with 4 supersaturated salt (1 M sodium chloride [NaCl]), sweet (1 M sucrose), sour (0.032 M citric acid), and bitter (0.001 M quinine hydrochloride) solutions and 50% ethanol, with self-rated pain intensity on a generalized labeled magnitude scale (gLMS) at the initial and final visits, were included in the study. Analysis was performed with Wilcoxon's signed-rank test, Spearman's correlation, and Mann-Whitney U test, with a significance of P = .05. This study was approved by the Research Ethics Board of the William Osler Health System. Results Twenty-seven female and 5 male patients with primary BMS, mean age 57.1 ± 1.5 years, were included in the study. Treatment duration ranged from 1 month to 22 months. Self-rated maximum (60.7 ± 20.58; 25.3 ± 19.1; P Conclusions In this study, it was found that in BMS, taste improved with reduction in pain. This supports the theory that impairment in taste may be involved in the etiology of BMS, which appears to improve after pain decreases.