TMJ Association, Ltd.

The focus of The TMJ Association's (TMJA) last three scientific meetings has been on Temporomandibular Disorders (TMD) and pain conditions that a patient might get before or after being diagnosed with TMD. The recommendations from these meetings and advocacy action by members of the Chronic Pain Research Alliance (CPRA) have prompted the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to form a  trans-NIH committee to address these conditions. On August 13-14, 2012 the trans-NIH committee sponsored A Workshop on Chronic Overlapping Pain Conditions, at the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland. The meeting was open to the research community.

TMJA President, Terrie Cowley, and the other members of the CPRA participated in the panel discussions addressing patients' concerns regarding the state of diagnosis and treatments of these conditions as well as research directions to advance understanding of these complex disorders. Conditions addressed at the workshop include chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic headache, endometriosis, fibromyalgia, interstitial cystitis, irritable bowel syndrome, low back pain, Temporomandibular Disorders, and vulvodynia.

The goals of the workshop were to:

1. Determine the state-of-the-science in chronic overlapping pain conditions;
2. Develop a coordinated research strategy in order to identify standard features of chronic overlapping conditions that will drive the development of research diagnostic criteria;
3. Improve and develop new research strategies to identify underlying mechanisms of etiology; trajectories of disease; risk factors for disease onset, progression and reversal; and outcome measures for these conditions.

We will share the formal workshop recommendations with you when we receive them.