Gender differences in temporomandibular disorders in adult populational studies: A systematic review and meta‐analysis

Summary The objective of this study was to systematically evaluate gender differences in the prevalence of TMD . A systematic review was performed in PubMed, EMBASE , Web of Science and LILACS in duplicate by two independent reviewers. The inclusion criteria were cross‐sectional studies that reported the prevalence of TMD for men and women and that used the Research Diagnostic Criteria for Temporomandibular Disorders ( RDC / TMD ) Axis I group diagnostic criteria:(group I = muscle disorders; group II = disc displacements; group III = arthralgias/arthritis/arthrosis).To be eligible for inclusion, studies must include adult individuals (>18 years) from a non‐clinical population (ie without pre‐diagnosis of TMD ); in other words, from population‐based studies. There were no restrictions on the year and language of publication. The quality of the articles was assessed by an adapted version of the Newcastle‐Ottawa Scale( NOS ), and the publication bias was assessed by a funnel plot graph. Data were quantitatively analysed by meta‐analysis using odds ratio ( OR ) as the measure effect. The electronic search retrieved a total of 6104 articles, of which 112 articles were selected for full‐text reading according to the eligibility criteria. By means of manual search, one study was retrieved. Five articles were selected for meta‐analysis with a combined sample of 2518 subjects. Women had higher prevalence of TMD in all RDC / TMD diagnostic groups. The meta‐analysis yielded the following results: (a) OR = 2.24 for global TMD (groups I, II and III combined), (b) OR = 2.09 for group I, (c) OR = 1.6 for group II and (d) OR = 2.08 for group III . The importance of gender in the development of TMD has been demonstrated, with a two times greater risk of women to develop it as compared to men.