Lichen Planus Study Maps Prevalence and Treatment Approaches

TOPLINE:

Lichen planus (LP) affects an estimated 0.15% of US adults, and more than half of patients do not receive treatment within a year of diagnosis by a dermatologist.

METHODOLOGY:

• To evaluate the prevalence of LP, researchers analyzed 566,851 eligible patients from the Explorys database, comprising electronic medical records from over 40 healthcare networks and 53 million patients across the United States.
• They also assessed treatment plans separately among 1998 newly diagnosed patients with LP between October 2015 and January 2020, who required at least one dermatology encounter within the first year following diagnosis.
• The primary outcome was overall prevalence of LP in the United States, including prevalence across specific age, sex, and racial subgroups. Additionally, dermatologist-prescribed treatments for non-oral LP were also reported.

TAKEAWAY:

• Overall, there were 1098 cases of LP (median age, 66 years; 74% women); the crude prevalence of LP was 0.19% and the age- and sex-standardized overall prevalence was 0.15%. Prevalence in women was 1.77 times higher than in men.
• Asian patients showed the highest standardized prevalence (0.2%), followed by Black patients (0.16). Prevalence increased with age, ranging from 0.04% among those aged 18-29 years to 0.26% among those aged 60-69 years and 0.33% among those aged 70-79 years.

IN PRACTICE:

“LP is a fairly common disease, which disproportionately affects women and individuals older than 60 years of age,” the authors wrote. “Future research to help identify patients who may need systemic treatment and determine appropriate treatments for patients with LP to limit sequelae is important as no medication is currently FDA-approved for LP,” they added.

SOURCE:

The study was led by Natalia Pelet Del Toro, MD, Department of Dermatology, Northwell Health, New Hyde Park, New York, and was published online on November 22 in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.

LIMITATIONS:

The absence of a precise diagnosis code for non-oral LP introduces potential misclassification risks. Additionally, the study design did not allow for the establishment of disease severity levels, limiting the ability to correlate treatment choices with disease severity.

DISCLOSURES:

The study did not receive any funding. Two authors reported to have received advisory fees, grants, and/or honoraria from several pharmaceutical companies. Pelet Del Toro and another author did not declare any conflict of interests.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.