Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has spread exponentially across the world. The typical manifestations of COVID-19 include fever, dry cough, headache and fatigue. However, atypical presentations of COVID-19 are being increasingly reported. Recently, a number of studies have recognized various mucocutaneous manifestations associated with COVID-19. This study sought to summarize the available literature and provide an overview of the potential orofacial manifestations of COVID-19. An online literature search in the PubMed and Scopus databases was conducted to retrieve the relevant studies published up to July 2020. Original studies published in English that reported orofacial manifestations in patients with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 were included; this yielded 16 articles involving 25 COVID-19-positive patients. The results showed a marked heterogeneity in COVID-19-associated orofacial manifestations. The most common orofacial manifestations were ulcerative lesions, vesiculobullous/macular lesions, and acute sialadentitis of the parotid gland (parotitis). In four cases, oral manifestations were the first signs of COVID-19. In summary, COVID-19 may cause orofacial manifestations that might be the initial features in several cases. However, the occurrence of orofacial manifestations in COVID-19 seems to be underreported, mainly due to the lack of oral examination of patients with suspected and/or confirmed COVID-19. Oral examination of all suspected and confirmed COVID-19 cases is crucial for better understanding and documenting COVID-19-associated orofacial manifestations.

Background: Oral lichen planus (OLP) is a chronic inflam-matory disorder with a potential of malignant transformation. Despite the extensive research on the topic, the management of OLP is still quite challenging, with no definitive cure. Objective: The present systematic review assessed the efficacy of topical hyaluronic acid in the management of OLP. Material and Methods: A comprehensive search of PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar was carried out by two independent investigators. All randomized clinical trials that compared the efficacy of hyaluronic acid with other interventions and/or placebo in the management of OLP and fulfilled the following criteria were included: 1) OLP diagnosis was confirmed clinically and histopathologically, 2) the study included systemically healthy patients aged 15 years and older, 3) a minimum sample size of 10, and 4) reporting the main outcomes including pain, erythema, and ulcer size. Case reports, case series, reviews, animal studies, uncontrolled trials were excluded. Results: Four clinical trials involving 234 patients were included. Two studies compared hyaluronic acid with a topical corticosteroid, and two studies compared it with placebo. Only one of the four included studies was at low risk of bias. Overall, topical hyaluronic acid showed good efficacy in alleviating the signs and symptoms of OLP. Two studies found hyaluronic acid significantly more effective in reducing pain and improving clinical signs of OLP compared to placebo. Compared to topical corticosteroids, one study reported comparable results; and one study found hyaluronic acid to be superior to triamcinolone in reducing pain but inferior to triamcinolone in improving the healing time. Conclusion: The limited available evidence suggests that hyaluronic acid may have some benefits in the management of OLP. Further well-designed studies with adequate follow-up periods are highly recommended.

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Background Epilepsy, a serious chronic neurological condition effecting up to 100 million people globally, has clear genetic underpinnings including common and rare variants. In Saudi Arabia the prevalence of epilepsy is high and caused mainly by perinatal and genetic factors. No whole-exome sequencing (WES) studies have been performed to date in Saudi Arabian Epilepsy cohorts. This offers a unique opportunity for the discovery of rare genetic variants impacting this disease as there is a high rate of consanguinity amongst large tribal pedigrees. Results We performed WES on 144 individuals diagnosed with epilepsy, to interrogate known Epilepsy related genes for known and functional novel variants. We also used an American College of Medical Genetics (ACMG) guideline based variant prioritization approach in an attempt to discover putative causative variants. We identified a 32 potentially causative pathogenic variants across 30 different genes in 44/144 (30%) of these Saudi Epilepsy individuals. We also identified 232 variants of unknown significance (VUS) across 101 different genes in 133/144 (92%) subjects. Strong enrichment of variants of likely pathogenicity were observed in previously described epilepsy-associated loci, and a number of putative pathogenic variants in novel loci are also observed. Conclusion Several putative pathogenic variants known to be epilepsy-related loci were identified for the first time in our population, in addition to several potential new loci have been identified which may be prioritized for further investigation.