Association between oral lichen planus and sleep quality: a systematic review

This study aimed to determine the association between sleep quality and oral lichen planus (OLP).

The protocol was registered in PROSPERO. The inclusion criteria used in the literature search consisted of studies that investigated sleep quality in patients with OLP, without language or publication time restrictions. The outcome measures included sleep quality, expressed by the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, Epworth Sleepiness Scale and General Health Questionnaire scores. A search was performed in PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, LILACS and Scopus. Another search in Google Scholar and manual search through the references as well were performed up to January 2024. Bias risk was determined using the JBI Critical Appraisal Checklist.

Four observational case-control studies with a total of 1125 participants were identified. Mean age ranged between 40 and 65.2 years, and all participants were over 18 years old. In all studies, OLP patients had higher sleep disturbance scores than control groups (p<.05). Patients with erosive OLP type had higher mean scores for insomnia.

Even though the results disclose an association between OLP and sleep disturbances, the evidence for such association is limited, because of the small number of studies published and their heterogeneity.