Association of salivary cortisol level and stress in patients with oral lichen planus

Abstract

lichen planus is a chronic inflammatory disease with unkhown ethiology which influences skin and mocusa and almost seen in 0.5-2.2 percent of normal population and it is common in females in mean age of 55. Considering the fact that the ulcerative type of OLP is sympthomatic and it,s khown as premalignant lesion there for it has a lot of importence. A lot of researches have been done inorder to find the ethiology of OLP and recently a lot of attention has been paid to the influence of stress on OLP in a way that some researches showed a relation between them and some did not . So the influence of stress on the development of lichen planus is contraversial. In this research the level of salivary cortisol and its relation with stress was studied in a sample of Iranian population with OLP. Materials and methods: in this study 60 People were chosen (30 People with OLP and 30 People without any disease for control group) amoung those who refered to the dental clinic.in this case- control study we applied independent t- test to compare mean difference and we used SPSS.15 computer softwore (P<0.05). Results: there was an increase in the patients with OLP in the level of stress and salivary cortisol which shows the relationship between stress and salivary cortisol and their increase in OLP patients. Conclusion: The salivary cortisol and stress level in patient group is higher than the control group and there is a meaning full direct relation between the level of strees and salivary cortisol in a way that with an increase of strees there was increase in salivary cortisol levels.