Are lower urinary tract conditions more common in children with sleep bruxism?

Introduction: Sleep bruxism is a parasomnia caused by rhythmic and non-rhythmic activity of the masticatory muscles during sleep. Prevalence of sleep bruxism is reported up to 40.6% in the literature. Sleep bruxism is a multifactorial issue and associated with multiple dental complications, sleep-related disorders, and psychosocial problems. We aimed to investigate if children with sleep bruxism suffer more from lower urinary tract conditions.

Materials and methods: Prospectively 128 children were included in this study. Sixty-four children constituted in the bruxism group and 64 children constituted in the control group. Children who admitted to the pediatric dentistry clinic with bruxism symptoms were recruited in the bruxism group. Control group constituted of consecutive 64 children who admitted to the pediatric dentistry clinic for routine dental examination. Parents were asked to fill out a questionnaire including Dysfunctional Voiding and Incontinence Scoring System (DVISS) form. Children's demographic data, presence of urinary frequency, presence of urgency, behaviour of voiding postponement, presence of daytime urinary incontinence, presence of enuresis nocturna, presence of fecal incontinence, presence of constipation, status of circumcision, and presence of bruxism related symptoms were recorded. Children with a DVISS score above 8 were considered to have functional voiding disorder. All children underwent a dental examination.

Results: The mean age of children was 73.3 ± 26.9 months. For all children (n = 128), the girl to boy ratio was 40:88. Mean DVISS score was 2.5 ± 3.8 and the mean QOL score was 0.1 ± 0.4 for all children. Eight (6.3%) children were found to have functional voiding disorder based on the DVISS score. There was no statistically significant difference for any lower urinary tract condition between the bruxism group and the control group (Table). Children with bruxism significantly had more tooth wear and masseter muscle hypertrophy (<0.001 and < 0.05).

Discussion: Sleep bruxism has been linked to a number of health issues including dental, systemic and psychosocial problems. Tooth wears, fatigue/pain in chewing muscles, gum recession, facial pain, masseter muscle hypertrophy and temporomandibular joint damage are the main complications of bruxism. Moreover, bruxism has been associated with systemic diseases and sypmtoms like asthma, respiratory illnesses, enuresis nocturna, anxiety, and stress.

Conclusions: Children with sleep bruxism suffer more from tooth wear, masseter muscle hypertrophy, and regional pain over the jaw. Additionally morning fatigue, relationship issues, and respiratory illnesses are more common in bruxist children. Lower urinary tract conditions are not more frequent in children with sleep bruxism.