USA: A recent study has suggested that patients with lichen planus (LP) may be at increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) beyond that is attributable to vascular risk factors. The findings of the study are published in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.
Lichen planus is an inflammatory dermatosis related to cardiovascular risk factors including dyslipidemia. Increasing evidence has indicated that inflammatory diseases, including skin diseases such as psoriasis, can drive CVD development. However, there is a lack of evidence on the relationship between LP and CVD. To fill this knowledge gap, Audrey C. Leasure, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, and colleagues aimed to determine the correlation between lichen planus and cardiovascular disease.
For this purpose, the authors performed a cross-sectional analysis of the UK Biobank, a UK-based cohort that enrolled 500,000 individuals aged 40 to 70 years, and of All of Us, a US-based cohort of >250,000 adults, to determine whether LP is associated with CVD.
In the UK Biobank, 792 of 502,536 (0.16%) participants had a diagnosis of LP (mean age, 59 years, 33% men), and in All of Us, 788 of 230,577 (0.34%) participants had a diagnosis of LP (mean age, 65 years, 26% men).
Based on the analysis, the researchers found the following:
Participants with LP were more likely to have CVD than those without LP in unadjusted and adjusted analyses (UK Biobank odds ratio [OR], 1.58 and All of Us OR, 1.20).
In the meta-analysis, LP was associated with a 37% increase in the odds of having CVD (OR, 1.37) without significant heterogeneity across studies.
In a sensitivity analysis in the UK Biobank, adjusting for C-reactive protein levels did not alter the results.
Age modified the association between LP and CVD; the magnitude of the association was largest in those aged 40 to 50 years and decreased with age.
"Although prior studies have associated LP with dyslipidemia, these results suggest that patients with LP may have an increased risk of CVD beyond that attributable to vascular risk factors," the authors wrote.
"The magnitude of association between LP and CVD was found to be largest in younger patients, which may reflect the accumulation of risk factors with aging that outweigh the risk of LP. Further studies investigating the association between LP and CVD are warranted," concluded the researchers.
Reference:
The study titled, "Association of lichen planus with cardiovascular disease: A combined analysis of the UK Biobank and All of Us Study," is published in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.
DOI: https://www.jaad.org/article/S0190-9622(21)02512-3/fulltext