Evaluation of the efficacy of Echinacea on clinical indices of Erosive Oral Lichen Planus: A randomized double-blind clinical trial

BACKGROUND: Oral lichen planus (OLP) is a chronic immune-mediated mucocutaneous disorder, with an unknown etiology. Since, both pain and discomfort are observed in patients with the erosive type, many drugs have been studied to alleviate pain and clinical symptoms. The present study aimed to assess the effectiveness of systemic Echinacea on clinical indices of OLP. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, 70 patients with erosive OLP were randomly divided into two groups, and each was treated with Echinacea tablets or placebo, 3 times a day, for 35 days. In addition, betamethasone lotion (0.1%) or nystatin (100,000 units) mouthwash were used by patients. The pain severity (visual analog scale [VAS]), lesion size, and the number of lesions were assessed at baseline and on days 10, 25, and 35 after study initiation. Finally, the obtained data were analyzed by statistical software, and Mann–Whitney test, Wilcoxon test, KaplanMeier, Chi-squared, and paired t-test. RESULTS: The VAS scores in the Echinacea group were significantly reduced at each visit compared to the placebo group (P < 0.001). We observed a significant difference between the two groups (P < 0.01). CONCLUSION: We showed that Echinacea is an effective and complementary therapy for OLP. Furthermore, in short-term usage, Echinacea is almost completely tolerable.