Association between periodontitis and temporomandibular joint disorders

BACKGROUND: Periodontitis (PD) may affect temporomandibular joint disorders (TMD) and TMD may influence PD in previous observational studies. Nevertheless, these studies were prone to confounders and reverse causation, leading to incorrect conclusions about causality and direction of association. This research investigates the associations between PD and TMD employing bidirectional two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis. METHODS: Single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) related to PD (p < 5 × 10(−6)) were selected from a genome-wide association study (GWAS) from the Gene-Lifestyle Interaction in the Dental Endpoints (GLIDE) consortium, and related these to SNPs from FinnGen and UK Biobank (UKB) consortia, and vice versa. We implemented the standard inverse variance weighted (IVW), weighted median (WM), MR-Egger regression, and MR-PRESSO methods to estimate the potential causality between PD and TMD. Sensitive tests were conducted using robust MR methods. Results from FinnGen and UKB were combined using the fixed model. RESULTS: PD did not appear to causally affect TMD. Additionally, the reverse MR analysis did not reveal a significant causal effect of TMD on PD. The results of other MR methods were similar to those of the IVW method. Sensitivity analyses addressed no potential pleiotropy in MR estimations. Results from the meta-analysis were consistent with the above-mentioned consequences. CONCLUSION: This research does not support a causal relationship between PD and TMD. PD does not appear to worsen TMD directly, and vice versa. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13075-023-03129-0.