Analysis of human serum metabolome for potential biomarkers identification of erosive oral lichen planus

Oral lichen planus (OLP) is a chronic auto-inflammatory mucositis and potentially oral premalignant lesion. Erosive OLP patients display the higher canceration rate as compared to the patients with non-erosive OLP. Identification of the potential biomarkers associated with erosive OLP may help to investigate the disease pathogenesis and to improve clinical treatment.Ultra-performance liquid chromatography-quadrupole time-of-flight-mass spectrometry (UPLC-QTOF-MS) combined with pattern recognition approaches were integrated to acquire differentially expressed metabolites for the pathways analysis and elucidate mechanisms of disease.Totally, 10 modulated metabolites were characterized as the potential biomarkers of erosive OLP, whose dysregulations could affect multiple metabolic pathways and pathological processes in the disease.These findings indicated that the analysis of human serum metabolome might be conducive to the achievement of the objectives of this study.