구강 작열감 증후군에서 Pregabalin의 치료 효과 = Effectiveness of Pregabalin in Treatment of Burning Mouth Syndrome

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Background and Objectives Burning mouth syndrome (BMS) is a chronic pain disorderinvolving a burning sensation of the oral cavity without any identifiable oral lesion. Accordingto the recent studies, the pathogenesis of BMS is presumed to be caused by a neuropathic condition.
Gabapentin and pregabalin have been used for various neuropathic pains, but pregabalinhas several pharmacokinetic advantages over gabapentin. To our best knowledge, there areno recent studies reported on the administration of pregabalin in treating BMS in Korea.
Therefore, in this study, we investigated the therapeutic effect of pregabalin in treating BMS.
Subjects and Method We chose as candidates 33 patients diagnosed as BMS and took pregabalinfor more than four weeks. Pregabalin was administered at 75 mg once a day for 2 to 4weeks at first, and then the dose was modified depending on whether or not symptoms improved.
Effectiveness of treatment was evaluated in the way that the patients subjectively answeredwhether or not symptoms were improved.
Results A total of 21 (63.6%) out of 33 patients were responsive to the treatment. Among those,at the last follow-up, 8 patients (38.1%) showed slight improvement, and 13 patients (61.9%)showed mostly improvement or disappearance of symptoms. The average time interval fromstarting pregabalin to the first symptom improvement was 50.1 days, and most patients showedsymptom improvement within 8 weeks.
Conclusion This study concludes that pregabalin can be added as a meaningful option inthe treatment of BMS. The additional double-blind clinical study should be followed to furtherprove the effectiveness of pregabalin.