Tacrolimus or clobetasol for treatment of oral lichen planus.

DATA SOURCES: Pubmed, the Cochrane library, Scopus, Science Direct and two publishing company journals between 1998 and 2012.

STUDY SELECTION: Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) where the population included patients having OLP and the interventions were the use of clobetasol or tacrolimus compared to another intervention, while the outcome was improvement in clinical status.

DATA EXTRACTION AND SYNTHESIS: Two authors working independently assessed for inclusion and performed data extraction. Quality was evaluated using Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) worksheets (http://www.casp-uk.net/). The treatment effect was calculated using OR and then pooled using a fixed model since heterogeneity was calculated as very low.

RESULTS

Ten studies were included; five studies involved clobetasol and five involved tacrolimus. Two meta-analyses were presented. The odds ratio for improvement for clobetasol was 1.21 (95%CI; 0.48 - 3.05) and 8.09 (95%CI; 3.77 - 17.38) for tacrolimus.

CONCLUSIONS

The authors concluded that using clobetasol or tacrolimus increases the odds of improvement of OLP lesions and therefore they are effective treatment for the condition, and go on to recommend tacrolimus as first-line therapy.