Search

Progress has been made in understanding skin diseases such as epidermolysis bullosa (EB). Epidermolysis bullosa is characterized by abnormal skin fragility and the formation of blisters and erosions of the skin and mucous membranes in response to minor trauma. The disease manifests in infancy, and, by childhood, patients have cutaneous scarring and mucosal involvement that can be severe. Treatment is palliative. Tacrolimus (FK506) is a new immunosuppressive agent used in organ transplantation. This agent has a number of nonimmune effects, one of which is augmentation of cell regeneration and repair.1 With the rationale of stimulating wound healing, we administered tacrolimus to a 5-year-old boy with dystrophic EB. There were no toxic effects, and scabs could form and affected areas heal since disease onset and treatment dramatically shortened the time to heal new lesions. Report of a Case. Our patient was normal at birth. Blistering began at 2 months; at 4

The efficacy and safety of tacrolimus- and cyclosporine-based immunosuppressive regimens were compared in a prospectively defined subgroup of kidney transplant recipients from the European, open, multicentre, 2:1 randomised, parallel group study. Patients were stratified as high risk for immunological events if they had a panel-reactive antibodies grade greater than 80% and/or a previous transplant functional for less than 1 year. The primary efficacy variables evaluated were the incidence of acute rejection, steroid usage and patient and graft survival. Safety was assessed based on adverse events and laboratory evaluations. At 1 year, the tacrolimus group (n= 22) had a lower incidence of biopsy-proven acute rejection (31.8%) and a higher graft survival (86.0%) than the 11 patients in the cyclosporine group (54.5 % and 72.0 %, respectively). The frequencies of adverse events were similar between the two groups. The tacrolimus regimen appears more beneficial for high risk patients than cyclosporine.