Lichen planus in children: review of 26 cases

Lichen Planus (LP) is a common, very itchy papulosquamous disorder. Most reports of LP in children have come from the Indian subcontinent, suggesting that children of South Asian origin are more susceptible to developing LP. We conducted a retrospective, open, observational study of children with LP over a 10-year period, comparing the proportion of ethnicity in this group with the background ethnicity using UK census data from 2001. Of 26 children included in the study, 21 (80.8%) were from the Indian subcontinent, whereas the majority of the child population of Birmingham (0-17 years) was white (58%), with only 28% of the population being South Asian. Statistical analysis showed that the over-representation of South Asians in our series is significant (P < 0.001, 95% CI 56-91%). To our knowledge, this is the largest study on LP in children outside the Indian subcontinent.