Page 88 - BH-2-1

Brain & Heart

LETTER TO EDITOR
QTc interval and sympathetic tone in burning

mouth syndrome

1,2
Takahiko Nagamine * and Takeshi Watanabe 3
1 Department of Psychiatric Internal Medicine, Sunlight Brain Research Center, Hofu, Yamaguchi, Japan
2 Department of Psychosomatic Dentistry, Graduate school of medical and dental sciences, Tokyo
Medical and Dental University, Tokyo, Japan
3 Department of Preventive Medicine, Tokushima University, Tokushima, Japan

Dear Editor,
The autonomic nervous system is closely related to the central nervous system and controls
a variety of physiological functions. Increasing focus is being paid to the functionality
of the neurocardiac axis and the crosstalk between brain and cardiac function. Brain
function is enabled by the functional connectivity between different neural regions,
which is referred to as a large-scale brain network. The functional brain networks consist
of at least seven major networks: Sensorimotor system, visual system, limbic system,
dorsal attention network, central executive network, default mode network, and salience
1
network. Alterations in brain network connectivity have been observed in a variety of
diseases, and exploring therapies that modulate large-scale brain networks have been
gaining traction in recent years. In this letter, I would like to share my perspectives
regarding a paper on neural networks surgery by Yu et al., which is an interesting read.
2
They described the application of brain network knowledge to the surgical treatment
of cerebrovascular disorders from a neurosurgical perspective, and indicated that the
treatment could protect the hubs that connect the nerves, and protect the connections
*Corresponding author: between the hubs. The perspective of this paper can also be applied to our research
Takahiko Nagamine
(tnagamine@outlook.com) area of chronic orofacial pain disorders of unknown origin. Therefore, we considered
the aforementioned hubs play a pivotal role in patients with burning mouth syndrome
Citation: Nagamine T, Watanabe T.
QTc interval and sympathetic tone (BMS), one of unexplained orofacial pain disorders, based on the measurement of QTc
in burning mouth syndrome. Brain & intervals as a marker related to the neurocardiac axis.
Heart. 2024;2(1):2016.
https://doi.org/10.36922/bh.2016 BMS is an intractable chronic pain disorder of unknown cause characterized by
burning sensation without any organic abnormality in the oral mucosa. According
Received: October 11, 2023
to the International Classification of Headache Disorders, Third Edition (ICHD-3),
Accepted: September 19, 2023 BMS is defined as an oral burning sensation or dysesthesia that recurs daily for more
3
Published Online: February 13, 2024 than 2 h, without a clinically evident causative lesion, lasting more than 3 months. In
psychopharmacotherapy for BMS, low-dose amitriptyline is the first-line drug, which
Copyright: © 2024 Author(s).
This is an Open-Access article modulates serotonergic neurotransmission and stimulates the descending pain inhibitory
2
distributed under the terms of the pathway and the parasympathetic tone. In view of the recent findings by Yu et al., we
Creative Commons Attribution undertook a study to investigate the autonomic nervous system of BMS patients, who
License, permitting distribution,
and reproduction in any medium, were not instructed to take any pharmacotherapy to avoid the influence of psychotropic
provided the original work is agents. During the first consultation, we obtained information such as the degree of pain
properly cited. as well as emotions associated with pain, and performed an electrocardiogram on the
Publisher’s Note: AccScience patients. This study was a single-center cohort study of consecutive patients who visited
Publishing remains neutral with our hospital from April 2018 to March 2019. These patients were diagnosed with BMS
regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional according to ICHD-3 criteria, and consented to participating in the study. Exclusion
affiliations. criteria of this study are as follows: (i) Patients with obvious cardiac disease, (ii) patients

Volume 2 Issue 1 (2024) 1 https://doi.org/10.36922/bh.2016