Estudo da prevalência dos auto-anticorpos marcadores de doenças reumáticas em pacientes com disfunção de articulação temporomandibula

Abstract

The present study had the objective of investigating whether patients with Temporo-Mandibular Joint Disorder (TMD) reveal, at the time of clinical diagnosis, the presence of certain serological markers, such as rheumatoid factor (RF), anti-citrulinated cyclic peptide antibody (Anti-CCP) and antinuclear antibodies (ANA), which are commonly considered to be the markers for incidence and evolution of the rheumatic autoimmune diseases, Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) and Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE). The sample size for the study consisted of 98 individuals, with 69 patients - clinically diagnosed with Disk displacement, or other Temporo-Mandibular Joint (TMJ) conditions such as arthralgia, osteoarthrosis and osteoarthritis - constituting the experimental group, and a control group of 29 apparently healthy subjects. The experimental group patients were diagnosed by applying Questionnaire RDC/TMD (Research Diagnostic Criteria), and evaluation for involvement of other systems and body organs, in addition to head and neck. Peripheral blood samples were collected from all the individuals, and the serum samples evaluated for the presence of RF, Anti-CCP and ANA. Of the 98 individuals under study, 18 revealed presence of one or more of the serological markers investigated - 16 (26.08%) of them being TMD patients, and the other two (6.8%) from the control group. The TMJ patients positive for serum markers were predominantly women in the 4th and 5th decades of age. Comparative evaluations for possible associations between a variety of clinical symptoms of TMD and positive serological markers revealed that there was a significantly elevated morning stiffness, as also inflammation in other body articulations, in the seropositive group. These results enable us to suggest, if only provisionally, the following hypotheses to explain the incidence of serological markers for systemic rheumatic diseases in TMD patients: I. The clinical incidence of TMD may coincide, or coexist, with the possible evolution of other systemic rheumatic diseases; and II. The clinical evolution of TMD possibly predisposes the individual to the incidence of non-odontological systemic rheumatic pathologies. The eventual confirmation of both, or either, of these hypotheses could contribute to the early diagnosis and institution of more efficient therapeutic strategies for a better control of systemic rheumatic diseases.