Oral lichen planus and intake of drugs metabolized by polymorphic cytochrome P450 enzymes.

OBJECTIVE

To study if patients with oral lichen planus (OLP) had a medication profile different from that of a control group without oral mucosal lesions. It was hypothesized that OLP lesions might result from poor drug metabolism (PM) because of genetic variation of the major cytochrome P450-enzymes (CYPs with a PM-risk).

SUBJECTS AND

METHODS

Dental records of 172 OLP patients were reviewed in this cross-sectional study and 152 sex- and age-matched subjects served as controls. The measures for the drug profiles were medicine type (ATC-code), mono- and polypharmacy, CYP-enzyme metabolism pattern, and medicine with a potential to induce lichenoid drug eruptions.

RESULTS

Fifty per cent of the OLP patients consumed daily medications as compared with 59% of the controls. The OLP patients more frequently consumed medicines metabolized by CYPs with a PM-risk (P = 0.03). Furthermore, they consumed more medicine with an inhibitory effect on one or more CYPs than the controls (P = 0.01).

CONCLUSION

Confounders like sex, age, systemic diseases, drug distribution into the therapeutic classes, and polypharmacy were similar in the two groups; but the OLP patients consumed more drugs metabolized by CYPs with a PM-risk. The results argue for further investigation of associations between OLP, medication intake and the CYP-enzyme metabolic pathways.