Oral manifestations of hepatitis C virus infection

Table 1 Main summary of the recent 3 meta-analyses on lichen planus and hepatitis C virus

Ref.	Country	Period covered by search	Type of studies included	Studies included in the meta-analysis	Cases/controls	Main results	Quality assessment of the included studies		1Quality assessment of the systematic review process
								Tool used
Shengyuan et al[15]	China	NA	Case control or control-existing studies	70	24987/65022	The prevalence of HCV exposure among patients with LP was higher than in control participants (OR = 5.4; 95%CI: 3.5-8.3)	Yes	According to Robinson et al[17]	High
			Clinical or histological LP diagnosis	58 on HCV prevalence in LP	35570/139120	The risk of LP among patients with HCV was higher than compared controls (OR = 2.5; 95%CI: 2.0-3.1)
			HCV status diagnosed by serology or PCR	12 on LP prevalence in HCV+
Lodi et al[13]	Italy	Jan 1966-Nov 2007	Controlled studies	39	22544/2860	LP patients have significantly higher risk than controls of being HCV seropositive (OR = 4.85; 95%CI: 3.58-6.56)	Yes	Characteristics of the study group, appropriateness of the control group, prospective design	High
			Clinical and histological LP diagnosis	33 on HCV prevalence in LP; 6 on LP prevalence in HCV+	3955/1242	HCV patients have an increased risk of having LP (OR = 4.47; 95%CI: 1.84-10.86)
			HCV status diagnosed by serology
Petti et al[14]	Italy	NA	Cross-sectional or case- control studies	44	NA	The overall risk for OLP among anti-HCV positive subjects was significantly higher than controls (OR = 2.8; 95%CI: 2.4-3.2)	No	NA	Uncertain
			Clinical or histological LP diagnosis. Any HCV testing			The fraction of global OLP cases associated with HCV (population attributable fraction) was 2.1% (95%CI: 1.9%-2.2%)

Modified from Baccaglini et al[16]. ¹According to PRISMA (Moher et al[18]);

²LP vs controls;

³HCV+ vs HCV-; NA: Not available; LP: Lichen planus; HCV: Hepatitis C virus.