Background: Oral burning symptom is often taken into account in Oral Medicine for its high prevalence and respective management problems. The clinical evidence that exclusion from the diet of some foods, considered potentially allergenic, would relieve this symptom represented the rationale of the present study. So, the main aim was to investigate the role of the IgE-mediated pathogenesis in patients with unspecified oral burning symptoms and positivity to the challenge with some foods.
Methods: Comparative levels of total serum and salivary IgE were investigated in 97 patients referred to the Sector of Oral Medicine (University of Palermo), of whom 50/97 as a Test group, symptomatic for burning complaint and affected by burning mouth syndrome (BMS), oral lichen planus (OLP) and recurrent aphtous stomatitis (RAS) and 47/97 as Control group, non-symptomatic, matched for gender, age-decade group and affected with different oral mucosal lesions.
Results: In the Test group, the following results were found: total average values for serum IgE of 71.5 (SD+/-100.3; range 4-424) and for salivary IgE of 8.7 (SD+/-30.4; with range 0-218). In the Control group total average values for serum IgE were 85.8 (SD+/-210.7; range 5-1390) and for salivary IgE 20.6 (SD+/-66.6; range 2-408). Statistical evaluation of serum and salivary total IgE levels did not find any significant difference in the Test group vs controls (p>0.2) with respect to gender, age-decade or different type of oral disease with burning symptoms. Of note, in the Test group a positive correlation was found between serum IgE levels and salivary total IgE.
Conclusions: On the basis of our results, no evidence of IgE-mediated allergic process can be suggested in such a generic oral burning symptom, even after a positive challenge for selective diet.