serum level of interleukin 17 in patients with erosive and non erosive oral lichen planus

background and aims. oral lichen planus is a relatively common chronic oral mucosal disease of unknown etiology. regarding numerous studies on the immunologic factors involved in the etiology of lichen planus, the present study evaluated the serum interleukin-17 (il-17) level in patients with erosive and non-erosive oral lichen planus. materials and methods. this descriptive analytical study included 24 patients with erosive oral lichen planus (eolp), 24 patients with non-erosive oral lichen planus (neolp) and 24 healthy volunteered as control. blood samples of the subjects underwent elisa, using special kits, to determine serum interleukin-17 levels. data was analyzed using with descriptive statistic, chi-square test, and one-way anova and tukey post-hoc test with spss 16 software. results. eolp patients showed a high level of serum il-17 compared with neolp patents and control groups (eolp=184.16 ± 12.41 pg/ml, neolp=106.09±10.78 pg/ml, control=15.50 ± 4.34 pg/ml, p - 0.001). conclusion. high level of serum il-17 in erosive oral lichen planus patients compared to the non-erosive type and healthy individuals may be the reason for higher inflammation and atrophy in the erosive type.