A retrospective study of the prevalence and incidence of recurrent aphthous ulcers in a professional population, 1958-1971.

A 12-year retrospective investigation of 1,788 professional school students from the University of Pennsylvania was conducted. Because of changes in profession, location, marital status, and names, only 651 proband subjected were available for the follow-up investigation. Techniques of subjective evaluation of disease status (mailed schedules describing disease and color photographs) were used in making an assessment of RAU, including both current disease and histories of prior disease. The data presented suggested a trend toward decreased RAU prevalence and severity among physicians, dentists, veterinarians, and nurses as compared with 12 years previously when they were professional school students. The prevalence rate, however, was still very high, indicating that 48.3 per cent of the men and 57.2 per cent of the women had RAU at the time. It has been suggested that the student years may represent the highest levels of RAU and that special features of the life patterns of the student favor disease expression; the data from study support this hypothesis, since reduction in severity was observed in all groups.