Awake bruxism behaviors frequency in a group of healthy young adults with different psychological scores

ABSTRACT

Objective

To assess the frequency of awake bruxism (AB) behaviors in a group of undergraduate dentistry students and correlate it with the status of anxiety and depression.

Materials and Methods

The frequency of five oral behaviors (i.e., relaxed jaw muscle, teeth contact, mandible bracing, teeth clenching, teeth grinding) was evaluated using a smartphone-based ecological momentary assessment (EMA) approach. The anxiety and depression status was investigated with the four-item patient health questionnaire for anxiety and depression (PHQ-4). ANOVA with Tukey post-hoc test was used to assess the difference in frequency of AB behaviors among the four PHQ-4 groups.

Results

Among the four groups, there was a statistically significant difference in the frequency of relaxed jaw muscle, teeth contact, mandible bracing, and teeth clenching, but not for teeth grinding.

Conclusion

Based on this cross-sectional study’s findings, psyche seems to have a determinant impact on AB behaviors, which is significantly higher in individuals with anxiety and depression traits.

KEYWORDS:

• Awake bruxism
• bruxism behaviors
• ecological momentary assessment
• anxiety
• depression

Acknowledgments

O.I.S. contributed to collection of the data, data processing and writing of the original draft. D.M. has been involved in conceptualization, methodology, supervision, reviewing and editing of the original draft. A.B. conceptualized the study and contributed to data collection. E.F.C. contributed to data collection M.F. contributed to data collection and supervised the investigation. A.C. took part in the collection of the data, data processing and editing of the original draft.

Disclosure statement

A.B. took part as a shareholder of the WMA srl Company for the development of software for smartphones. The remaining authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Informed consent statement

All individuals gave their informed consent in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration and understood that they were free to withdraw from the study at any time. The research protocol was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Orofacial Pain Unit, University of Siena, Siena, Italy (#0034–2019).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.