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What is it?
Oral hairy leukoplakia (LVO) is one or more white patches that can appear in the mouth. Normally, these plaques appear along the border of the tongue, but sometimes develop on the top or bottom of the tongue or along the inside of the cheek. If you look closely, these plaques can appear hairy or contain a number of small folds or bumps.
The LVO may look like thrush (oral candidiasis), another common problem characterized by white patches that develops in the mouths of people with HIV. However, if canker scraped gently using a toothbrush, usually are removed, the LVO not.
The LVO is one of the first opportunistic infections that occur in people with HIV. May occur with any T-cell count While there are people with HIV with more than 500 T cells that developed LVO, is more common in those with T-cell counts under 200. It is noteworthy that the LVO may affect those with healthy immune systems, even those who are not infected with HIV.
It is considered a benign disease, since it rarely causes serious physical problems and cause no serious complications.
The Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is causing the LVO. Most people worldwide are infected with EBV. But only some, including those with a weakened immune system, develop the disease.
Over 25% of HIV positive people LVO develops sometime during the course of infection. It is more common among HIV positive men and smokers.
What are the symptoms of LVO?
The classic symptom of the LVO are looking fluffy white patches (hairy) and bumps that develop on the edge of the tongue. Plates may also appear at the top or bottom of the tongue, or along the inside of the cheek. It is also possible that these plates do not exhibit villi and contain no visible bumps or creases.
In general, LVO causes no other symptoms. Therefore, many people may not know they have LVO unless you consider the tongue or inside the mouth to find the plates, which usually do not cause discomfort or affect the taste of food or liquids. In some cases, LVO may cause mild pain, taste changes and sharpen sensitivity to food temperatures.
How is it diagnosed the LVO?
Often, health professionals can diagnose by simply looking LVO white plates. To find out if LVO plates or thrush (candidiasis) may be a simple test of scaling. With the help of a trowel or brush teeth gently scraping the plate. If the board is clear with white scaling, it is probably thrush, not LVO.
To be sure if the white patch is LVO, your health care provider can send a sample to a lab for analysis. The lab will look for the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) to confirm the diagnosis of LVO.