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. 2026 Jan 15;60(1):121. doi: 10.26650/eor.20251649226

Comment on the article: Clinical and demographic profile of oral lichen planus in Sri Lanka: a retrospective study

Manas Bajpai 1,*
PMCID: PMC12958326  PMID: 41788888

To the editor,

I read the article titled ‘Clinical and demographic profile of Oral Lichen Planus in Sri Lanka: A retrospective study authored by BSM Samadarani et al. (1). I found this article enlightening and up to the minute. The distinction between Oral Lichen Planus (OLP) and Oral lichenoid reaction (OLR) is extremely difficult due to their remarkably similar clinical and histopathological features, while clinical history triggers identification and histopathological examination remain crucial, immunohistochemistry (IHC) offers more precise understanding of the underlying mechanism. Oral lichen planus are generally bilateral lesions may or may not be symmetrical (2). I reported a case of unilateral lichen planus in 2014 which was distinguished from lichenoid reaction due to the immunohistochemical positivity of CD 8+ T cell. CD 8 + T cell often shows a stronger positive expression in OLP than OLR (3). Recently Suzuki T et al. (4) found over -expression of COX -2 by epithelial cells in OLL, that could inferred oncogenic changes, because COX -2 was described to modulate cell proliferation and apoptosis against oncogenic alterations (5). Immunohistochemistry has emerged as a valuable adjunct to traditional diagnostic methods in differentiating OLP from OLR by providing a more detailed characterization of the inflammatory infiltrate and epithelial changes.

Footnotes

Ethics committee approval: Not required.

Informed consent: Not required.

Peer review: Not required.

Author contributions: MB has approved the final version of this paper. MB guarantees that all individuals who meet the Journal’s authorship criteria are included as authors of this paper.

Conflict of interest: The author declared that they have no conflict of interest.

Financial disclosure The author declared that they have received no financial support.

References

  1. Siriwardenaa BS, Hettiarachchi K, Jayasinghe RD. Clinical and demographic profile of oral lichen planus in Sri Lanka: a retrospective study. Eur Oral Res. 2025. Jan;59(1):1–6. 10.26650/eor.20241331423 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  2. Srivastava KC, Saini RS, Lin GSS, Heboyan A, Shrivastava D. A Decadal Bibliometric Analysis on the Therapeutic Strategies in Oral Lichen Planus. Health Sci Rep 2025; 29:8:e70403. 10.1002/hsr2.70403 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed]
  3. Bajpai M, Agarwal D, Bhalla A, VatchalaRani RM, Kumar M. Unilateral lichen planus: A rare case report. J Nat Sci Biol Med. 2014. Jul;5(2):453–5. 10.4103/0976-9668.136248 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  4. Suzuki T, Suemitsu M, Nakayama M, Taguchi C, Ukigaya M, Nakamura C, et al. Histopathological and Immunohistochemical Study of the Distinction between Oral Lichen Planus and Oral Lichenoid Lesions. Open J Stomatol. 2021;11(2):91–6. 10.4236/ojst.2021.112008 [DOI] [Google Scholar]
  5. Arber N. Cyclooxygenase-2 inhibitors in colorectal cancer prevention: point. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2008. Aug;17(8):1852–7. 10.1158/1055-9965.EPI-08-0167 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

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