Pain and Sensory Changes Assessment in HIV+ Patients

• Number of Participants With Chronic Myogenic Pain, TMJ Disoder, and Burning Mouth Syndrome [ Time Frame: Tests were performed during regular clinical visit. The test duration was about an hour ]
  1. To investigate the prevalence of orofacial pain in HIV infected patients during routine dental clinical assessment.

  To study the sensory phenotype of HIV+ patients and healthy volunteers using Quantitative Sensory Testing:

  • To detect the presence of sensory aberrations in the orofacial complex;
  • To identify which nerve types are involved;

  • To identify the type of orofacial pain based on both sensory testing and clinical findings.

    3.To determine psychological condition and nutrition status in patients with HIV.

    4.To find associations between inherited traits and development of neuropathic pain.

  
  
• Spontaneous Pain Intensity [ Time Frame: The time of the examination ]

  Pain intensity as measured with Visual Analog Scale during the time of examination.

  The subjects were required to report their perceived level of pain on a 10 cm VAS scale from zero to 10 with zero being no pain and 10 representing the worst pain imaginable. Given the ease of use of this method and its current use to measure pain, VAS scales were adapted to measure patient perceived orofacial pain wherein subjects were asked to draw a vertical line at the point on the horizontal line which best represented their pain response. Where left 0 is no pain and right -10 is maximal pain.

  
  

Patients and control volunteers will be recruited from the Oral medicine Post-graduate clinic at NJDS. Medical history will be taken and will include age, gender, ethnicity, current and past illnesses, current and past medications, blood reports (CD4 and CD8 counts) which have been obtained during routine medical assessment. The clinician will perform a clinical head and neck examination. The examination shall include an extra-oral, cranial nerve and temporomandibular joint (TMJ) examination, and muscle palpation. A thorough intraoral examination will be performed. Patients will be examined for pathologies of the oral mucosa, teeth and periodontium prior to their participation in the study. The evaluation findings will be reported using the Research Diagnostic Criteria for Temperomandibular disorders. The patient will note level of pain on Visual Analogue Scale if there is any pre-existing orofacial pain. Psychological screening and nutritional questionnaires will be completed by the patient.

Quantitative Sensory Testing will be conducted bilaterally on the face and intraorally on the tongue. Extraorally, the infraorbital and mental nerves regions will be tested bilaterally using thermal and electrical detection thresholds. Intraorally the tongue will be tested bilaterally for thermal and electrical detection threshold.

Many of the differences among people in the way they respond to symptomatic therapies and their individual risk of HIV+ patients with neuropathic pain may be affected by their genetic makeup. We will search for these kinds of associations between inherited traits and development of neuropathic pain in this study.

If the patient presents with evidence for pathologies that requires extraction of any molar (based on clinical and radiographic findings), the patient will be assessed 3 days, 8 days post-extraction and then after 3 weeks for thermal and electrical detection thresholds.

Inclusion criteria:

Group I n = 40 HIV+ with CD4+T cells/mm³ > 500 as determined by previous routine medical examination and from previous blood reports.

Group II n = 40 HIV+ with CD4+T cells/mm³ 200-499 as determined by previous routine medical examination and from previous blood reports.

Group III n = 40 HIV+ with CD4+T cells/mm³ < 200 as determined by previous routine medical examination and from previous blood reports.

Control Group n = 40 Healthy with normal blood reports, without dental pathologies.