Oral lichen planus (OLP) is a chronic inflammatory disease of the oral mucosa. Several clinical subtypes of OLP have been reported, including the reticular and erosive one. On the one hand, reticular OLP is usually asymptomatic and is characterized by white streaks surrounded by well-defined erythematous borders. On the other hand, erosive OLP shows ulcerations and erosions surrounded by erythematous mucosa. While reticular OLP is relatively easy to control, erosive OLP is extremely painful and refractory to therapies, limiting the quality of life of the patients. In addition, treating erosive OLP is extremely tricky, and a gold standard treatment has not yet been established. However, several therapeutic approaches have been reported as effective, including systemic corticosteroids, systemic retinoids, and anti-interleukin (IL)-17/anti-IL-23 drugs. Indeed, our group and other several authors reported the effectiveness of anti-IL17, anti-IL12/23, and anti-IL23 agents in refractory OLP, highlighting the urgency of clinical studies on the use of anti-IL agents in OLP patients. In this paper, we reviewed the English- and German-language literature about therapeutic strategies for treating OLP, focusing on new systemic therapies for erosive OLP.
Behçet’s disease (BD) is a systemic inflammatory disease of unknown etiology. BD is characterized by relapsing oral and genital ulcers, several different cutaneous features, relapsing bilateral uveitis, and involvement of internal organs, showing vascular, gastrointestinal, and neurological manifestations. Serologically, BD is not characterized by disease-specific autoantibodies. In fact, only laboratory markers of inflammation, such as C-reactive protein, may be increased in association with increased disease activity. Bullous pemphigoid (BP) is an autoimmune disease characterized mainly by tense blisters and urticaria-like plaques on the skin. In addition, BP can involve oral mucosa in up to 20% of patients. Patients with BP show serum IgG autoantibodies against BP antigen 180 (BP180) and/or BP antigen 230 (BP230). Tissue-bound autoantibodies can be visualized as linear IgG staining along the basement membrane by direct immunofluorescence microscopy. In this report, we first described a young patient with BD who showed IgG autoantibodies against BP180 without developing blisters or urticaria-like plaques.
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