title: Management of symptomatic erosive-ulcerative lesions of oral lichen planus in an adult Egyptian population using Selenium-ACE combined with topical corticosteroids plus antifungal agent.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Oral lichen planus (OLP) is a chronic mucocutaneous disease with an immunological etiology. This study was conducted to evaluate the effect of selenium combined with Vitamins A, C & E (Selenium-ACE) in the treatment of erosive-ulcerative OLP as an adjunctive to topical corticosteroids plus antifungal agent.
  
  
  METHODS
  Thirty patients with a confirmed clinical and histopathologic diagnosis of OLP participated in this clinical trial. Patients were randomly allocated into one of three groups and treated as follows: (I) Topical corticosteroids, (II) topical corticosteroids plus antifungal, and (III) SE-ACE combined with topical corticosteroids plus antifungal. The patients were followed for 6 weeks. The pain and severity of the lesions were recorded at the initial and follow-up visits. All recorded data were analyzed using paired t-test and ANOVA test. A P ≤ 0.05 was considered significant.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The experimental groups showed a marked reduction in pain sensation and size of lesions, particularly in the final follow-up period, but there was no significant difference between the first two Groups I and II. However, healing of lesions and improvement of pain sensation was effective in Group III since a significant difference was found favoring Group III over both Groups I and II.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  No significant difference was found in treating erosive-ulcerative lesions of OLP by topical corticosteroids alone or combined with antifungal. However, when using SE-ACE in combination with topical corticosteroids plus antifungal, this approach may be effective in managing ulcerative lesions of OLP; but more research with a larger sample size and a longer evaluation period may be recommended.
authors.affiliation: Department of Oral Medicine, Periodontology, Oral Diagnosis and Radiology, Faculty of Dentistry, Damanhour University, Damanhour, Egypt.
authors.forename: Mahmoud Helmy
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: Belal
keywords: Antioxidant; Egypt; Selenium-ACE; clinical trial; erosive; oral lichen planus; treatment; ulcerative