Association between Hepatitis C Virus and Different Manifestations of Lichen Planus in a Tertiary Care Hospital.

Lichen planus (LP) is a persistent mucocutaneous disorder with an unclear cause. Recent findings indicate that LP may be an extrahepatic manifestation of Hepatitis C infection. The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of hepatitis C among our lichen planus patients. This cross-sectional study was done in the Dermatology and Venereology Department of Bangladesh Medical University, Dhaka, Bangladesh from January 2023 to December 2023. A total of 125 individual were diagnosed with lichen planus who satisfied the inclusion criteria were enrolled in this study. Diagnoses were based on standard clinical indicators and when required, distinctive histopathological features. All patients underwent screening for anti-HCV antibodies by using ELISA. Statistical analyses were conducted using SPSS-22.0 window-based software for statistical analysis. The study included 125 patients, maintaining the same male to female ratio 1:2.1. Among these, 44(35.2%) tested positive for HCV. Out of which 15(34.1%) patients had erosive/ulcerative forms, 27(61.4%) exhibited mucocutaneous manifestations and 2(4.5%) had purely cutaneous lichen planus. The study found that over one-third of the subjects tested positive for HCV. Interestingly, specific variants of cutaneous lichen planus, including hypertrophic, segmental, flexural, actinic and annular types, which were rare in our group, had not been linked to HCV before. This implies that HCV might play a causative role in the occurrence of lichen planus in our specific geographic area.