Inflammatory markers in sera in patients diagnosed with mucosal lichen planus

Abstract: OBJECTIVE: Lichen planus is a disease that can affect both skin and mucosa, in some cases both at the same time. Among patients with lichen planus, the oral version of lichen planus (OLP) can be observed in 50 – 70 %. OLP is the most common chronic inflammatory disease of oral mucosa. Today it is known that OLP is an inflammatory condition but it is not known exactly what substances are prominent and active during this specific inflammatory process. The aim of this study was to examine inflammatory factors involved in OLP. METHODS: A total of 24 individuals were included in this prospective study. 15 of these were patients diagnosed with mucosal LP, whereas the other nine were healthy controls. Blood samples were taken from all participants and sent to Life Science Lab in Uppsala where they used Olinks inflammation panel to analyse inflammatory markers in the blood samples. RESULTS: There were differences in inflammatory factors in blood between the controls and patients with mucosal lichen planus. The inflammatory factors that contributed the most to this difference were IL-5, SCF, FGF-19 and FGF-21. CONCLUSIONS: Due to the differences between LP-patients and controls we can conclude that there are tendencies to an inflammatory process going on systemically involving different levels of mainly IL-5, SCF, FGF-19 and FGF-21. The inflammatory factors that contributed the most to the differences between the two groups are not the typical ones that have been the resulting elevated inflammatory factors in other previous studies.