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Pentoxifylline (anti-tumor necrosis factor drug): effective adjuvant therapy in the control of ocular cicatricial pemphigoid (OCP)

Session Details

Session Title: Ocular pathologies and training and innovation

Session Date/Time: Monday 07/10/2013 | 08:00-10:00

Paper Time: 09:16

Venue: Emerald (First Floor)

First Author: : M.Fakhry Khattab EGYPT

Co Author(s): :    M. El Darouti   R. Hegazy           

Abstract Details

Purpose:

to evaluate the effectiveness of adding pentoxifylline as an anti tumor-necrosis-factor-alpha (TNF-?) drug to the well documented therapy of steroids and cyclophosphamide in controlling OCP.

Setting:

Kasr Aini hospital, Cairo University, Egypt

Methods:

a randomized, controlled, comparative, blinded study which included thirty patients with different grades of OCP. They were randomly divided into two equal groups. Group (A) patients received pulse steroid and cyclophosphamide therapy; in addition group (B) patients received intravenous pentoxifylline. Patients were evaluated before and after therapy clinically, histopathologically; and serologically (serum level of TNF-?). Twenty controls were included to compare their serum TNF-? level with that measured in OCP patients.

Results:

Group (B) patients showed a more significant improvement in their clinical and histopathological evaluation. The serum TNF-? was significantly higher in OCP cases prior to therapy compared to the control group (P=0.0001). Following therapy, serum TNF-? showed a more significant reduction in group (B) patients (77.4±26.1) to (19.2±15.6) compared to group (A) patients (50.3±14.3) to (36.2±18.3).

Conclusions:

The significantly increased level of serum TNF-? in OCP as compared to controls proves that TNF-? has an important role in the pathogenesis of this disease. The study illustrated that the addition of pentoxifylline to pulse steroid-cyclophosphamide therapy is an effective, safe and economic method in controlling OCP through directly reducing the TNF-? levels, with long periods of remission as detected in our 18 months follow-up period.

Financial Interest:

NONE