title: Bruxism: is it a new sign of the cardiovascular diseases?
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To determine the relationship between bruxism and cardiovascular diseases.
  
  
  METHODS
  120 patients who referred to the Dentistry Faculty with the complaint of bruxism were selected. All patients gave informed consent for participation in the study. All of the patients were examined and bruxism was classified. And also these were examined by B-mode ultrasound to measure the Intima Media Thickness (IMT) at the far wall of the common carotid artery. A wide range of vascular risk factors including age, gender, body mass index, and previous history were surveyed. Spearman correlation analysis was performed to ascertain quantitative comparison, Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis test were used for comparison of means
  
  
  RESULTS
  There were 66 (55%) male and 54 (45%) female patients, with a female to male ratio of 1/1.2. The mean age was 35.6 +/- 1,25 years (range 18-65 years). In the analysis of bruxism classification and IMT there was a statistical significance between bruxism classification subgroup 1, 2, 3 and IMT. There was no statistical significance between bruxism classification Subgroup 4 and IMT due to the small number of the patients (n = 12).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Stressful situations can cause both bruxism and cardiovascular disease such as coronary artery diseases, hypertension, arrhythmias, cardiomyopathy. The statistical analysis supported this hypothesis. However, we need to new studies with large number of samples to confirm this hypothesis. Clearly, future studies in this field will need to take into consideration the influence of the following variables: age, use of medication or drugs, smoking habits, and other sleep disorders.
authors.affiliation: Department of Cardiology, Medicine Faculty, Dicle University, Turkey. zariturk@yahoo.com
authors.forename: Z
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Atilgan
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Buyukkaya
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Yaman
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Tekbas
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Atilgan
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gunay
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Palanci
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Guven
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002012:Bruxism / Q000145:classification / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000209:etiology*; D002318:Cardiovascular Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000473:pathology; D059168:Carotid Intima-Media Thickness; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012307:Risk Factors; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000209:etiology*; D055815:Young Adult