Dyslipidemia and metabolic syndrome in patients with lichen planus: A case-control study

Objectives 1) to study the lipid levels in patients with lichen planus and controls,to find the association of lichen planus with dyslipidemia and to find the association of lichen planus with metabolic syndrome. methods this was a case-control study involving a total of 100 patients,consecutively visiting the outpatient dermatology department at karnataka institute of medical sciences hubli,karnataka. men and women with age more than 18 years (50 cases with lichen planus and 50 controls without lichen planus and had other skin diseases mainly nevi,seborrheic keratosis,verruca vulgaris). results we found significantly higher levels of triglycerides (153.03 vs 107.91 p value 0.008),total cholesterol (158.49 vs 143.47 p value 0.018),vldl (30.61 vs 22.75 p value0.021) and significantly lower levels of hdl (38.86 vs 45.78 p value < 0.001). both tg/hdl ratio (4.26 vs 3.19) and ldl/hdl ratio (2.45 vs 1.78) were significantly higher with a p value of < 0.0001. atp-iii criteria for metabolic syndrome were met by 6% of the patients with lp versus 2% of the controls (p value=0.617),suggesting no association between metabolic syndrome and lichen planus. the prevalence of dyslipidemia in patients with lp was 38% for cases and 6% for controls (p value < 0.001). a multivariate logistic regression model demonstrated that lp was associated with dyslipidemia,even after controlling for confounders,including age,gender,bmi and fbs levels (or=11.53 95%,ci=2.80-47.55,p value < 0.001). conclusion the results obtained in our study support the association of dyslipidemia in lichen planus which was seen even after controlling the confounding factors. the study also highlights the importance of routine screening of dyslipidemia since early intervention may reduce the risk and complications of cardiovascular disease later in life. however,there was no association seen between lichen planus and metabolic syndrome. further studies are required to establish this finding.