Study on the Role of Salivary Flora and NF-κB Inflammatory Signal Pathway in Oral Lichen Planus

Oral lichen planus (OLP) is an inflammatory disease. It is believed that infection and immune dysfunction play a key role in its pathogenesis, but the specific mechanism of action remains unclear. The 16s rRNA high-throughput sequencing technique was used to analyze the microbial flora structure in the saliva of OLP patients and healthy controls. The relative abundance of Derxia, Haemophilus, and Pseudomonas in the saliva of the OLP group was lower than that of the healthy control group, but there was no significant difference in the overall structure of the microbial population. In addition, we measured the protein expression levels of toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) and nuclear factor-kappab p65 (NF-κB p65) in the tissues of OLP patients, and found that there was a significant increase and positive correlation between them (r = 0.907, P = 0.034). The expression levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6) and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) in the OLP group were consistent with those of NF-κB p65. Therefore, we believe that changes in the composition ratio of microbialflora break the original balance state of flora, promote the occurrence of immune inflammatory reaction, and then lead to the generation or aggravation of OLP disease. This discovery provides new ideas for further research on OLP initiation and immune regulation mechanism.