Oral lichen planus: different clinical features in HCV-positive and HCV-negative patients.

BACKGROUND: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection induces variable dermatologic manifestations.

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether differences exist in the clinical features and behavior of oral lichen planus (OLP) between HCV-positive (HCV+ve) and HCV-negative (HCV-ve) patients.

METHODS: Two hundred and sixty three patients (156 women and 107 men), with a mean age of 55.5 years, with OLP (76 HCV+ve and 187 HCV-ve) were clinically evaluated. Previously, all local factors that could modify the clinical characteristics were removed and were monitored carefully following morphology.

RESULTS: In both groups, the prevalent clinical form of OLP was the mixed form (33.1% in HCV-ve and 35.5% in HCV+ve patients), in which reticular-plaque lesions coexist with atrophic-erosive ones. The reticular form was more frequent in HCV+ve (25%) than in HCV-ve (18. 7%) patients, whereas plaque lesions were more prevalent in HCV-ve (15.5%) than in HCV+ve (5.2%) patients (P < 0.01, chi-squared test). There were no significant differences in the frequency of erosive (27.2% in HCV-ve and 27.6% in HCV+ve) and atrophic (5.3% in HCV-ve and 5.2% in HCV+ve) forms between the two groups.

CONCLUSIONS: Our findings show that there were statistically significant differences between OLP-HCV-ve and OLP-HCV+ve groups for reticular and plaque clinical forms. These findings underline the importance of liver examination in all OLP patients, including cases with mild, asymptomatic keratotic forms of the disease.