Efficacy of clonazepam in the treatment of burning mouth syndrome: literature review

Abstract

Burning mouth syndrome (BMS) is defined as a burning sensation or intraoral dysaesthesia, recurring at least 2 hours daily for more than 3 months and clinically without causal lesions. Its pathophysiology is unclear, so there is no fully effective treatment. The aim of this work is to study the efficacy of clonazepam treatment in burning mouth syndrome. To this end, a search for ‘BURNING MOUTH SYNDROME’ AND ‘CLONAZEPAM’ was carried out on PubMed. After applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 17 studies were analysed. The great heterogeneity between the studies makes it difficult to compare them. The guidelines used to prescribe clonazepam in each article and the ways of analysing the results varied widely. However, clonazepam has been effective in all but one of the studies. It is therefore concluded that clonazepam is effective in the treatment of burning mouth syndrome, but more research is needed to determine doses, guidelines and duration of treatment.