Clinical and fundamental investigations on recurrent glossodynia

Abstract

A type of oral lesion, so-called glossodynia has been on the increase recently. Glossodynia is a kind of psychosomatic disease in which the patient experiences chronic pain on the surface of the tongue. It has never been diagnosed as coming from organic or functional pain. Although glossodynia can be cured by antianxiety drugs, antidepressants, or autogenic training and so on, usually. These are not a desirable solution. We initially tried to administer the antifungal drug, ITCZ, to 65 glossodynia patients. Sixty-four of them were cured of tongue pain after 1-3 weeks. The effective rate of recovery was 98.5%. Only two patients experienced reccurence of pain after 15 and 17 weeks, respectively, and Candida albicans was isolated from the surface of their tongues. The nature of the recurrent strains was investigated by MICs against 4 antifungal drugs, ITCZ, MCZ, AMPH-B, and NYS, as well as by the API 20C Auxanogram biochemically, and a molecular epidemiologic study by PFGE. Each case of Candida albicans was almost the same before and after the administration of ITCZ. Above all, it is important to carefully inspect the candidiasis of the tongue and to initially administer antifungal drugs when the diagnosis is glossodynia.