Version 1
: Received: 8 January 2024 / Approved: 8 January 2024 / Online: 8 January 2024 (16:57:52 CET)
Version 2
: Received: 23 January 2024 / Approved: 24 January 2024 / Online: 24 January 2024 (09:47:20 CET)
Version 3
: Received: 14 February 2024 / Approved: 14 February 2024 / Online: 14 February 2024 (11:31:21 CET)
Burning mouth syndrome (BMS) is a chronic oral pain disorder. There is a theory that BMS is nociplastic pain. Standard treatment for BMS has not yet been established. Kampo medicine is a traditional oriental medicine. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of rikkosan—a traditional Japanese herbal medicine (Kampo)—in the treatment of BMS. A single-center retrospective study was conducted in 20 patients who were diagnosed with BMS and treated with rikkosan alone (7.5 g) three times daily for approximately 4 weeks. They were treated with rikkosan alone approximately 4 weeks (29.5 ± 6.5 days) for the initial treatment. They had an average age of 63 years and 90% were being treated for other illnesses, but their medication status was the same during this study period, except for rikkosan. No side effects were observed in patients. Numerical rating scale (NRS) or visual analogue scale (VAS)/10 scores decreased significantly between the time of the initiation of rikkosan and the one-month after (-2.1 ± 1.2, p < 0.05). Rikkosan has a short-term effect of reducing NRS by two levels in BMS patients.
Keywords
Burning mouth syndrome; Nociplastic pain; Pharmacotherapy; Kampo medicine
Subject
Medicine and Pharmacology, Clinical Medicine
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.