Diabetes mellitus in classical trigeminal neuralgia: A predisposing factor for its development.
OBJECTIVE
A higher prevalence of diabetes mellitus in classical trigeminal neuralgia patients was observed in few pilot surveys. The study was aimed to investigate whether diabetes mellitus is a predisposing factor for developing trigeminal neuralgia.


METHODS
Patients with classical trigeminal neuralgia were enrolled in the case study group. The control group consisted of the same number of age- and gender-matched, randomly sampled subjects without trigeminal neuralgia. Characteristics of classical trigeminal neuralgia cases were analyzed. The prevalence of diabetes mellitus in the cases and controls was calculated using the Chi-square test.


RESULTS
The onset age ranged from 31 to 93 in 256 patients affected classical trigeminal neuralgia (162 females; 94 males) with a peak age between the fifth and seventh decade; right-side involvement and mandibular branch affliction occurred at a greater frequency. 21.9% patients in the study group was affected by diabetes mellitus compared to 12.9% of controls. The increased prevalence of diabetes mellitus in the trigeminal neuralgia group was statistically significant (P=0.01).


CONCLUSIONS
Diabetes is a risk factor to the development of classical trigeminal neuralgia, and nerve damage duing to hyperglycemia might be the linkage to the two diseases. More works should be done to consolidate the correlation and to clarify the underlying mechanism for the positive association which would provide new insight into the pathogenesis of trigeminal neuralgia and may open new therapeutic perspectives.
Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Tianjin Stomatological Hospital, China. Electronic address: hugoxuarticles@hotmail.com.
Zhenq
Z
Xu
Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Tianjin Stomatological Hospital, China.
Ping
P
Zhang
Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Tianjin Stomatological Hospital, China.
Li
L
Long
Department of Medicine, Tianjin Stomatological Hospital, China.
Huiy
H
He
Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Tianjin Stomatological Hospital, China.
Jianch
J
Zhang
Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Tianjin Stomatological Hospital, China.
Shup
S
Sun
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003920:Diabetes Mellitus / Q000453:epidemiology; D003929:Diabetic Neuropathies / Q000150:complications* / Q000453:epidemiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012307:Risk Factors; D014277:Trigeminal Neuralgia / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000209:etiology*
Classical trigeminal neuralgia; Diabetes mellitus; Hyperglycemia; Nerve damage; Painful diabetic peripheral neuropathy; Risk factor