Kyriacos Athanasiou, a biomedical engineering professor at the University of California, Irvine, said it was because TMJ disorders are more prevalent among women that they were historically dismissed as neither serious nor complex, slowing research into the cause and treatment. The resulting dearth of knowledge, which is glaring when compared with other joints, has been "a huge disservice" to patients, Athanasiou said. In a 2021 study he co-authored, researchers found that the knee, despite being a much simpler joint, was the subject of about six times as many research papers and grants in a single year than the jaw joint. Watch More