Back ground:Hand eczema is a commonest disorder afflicting the hands with various morphological forms and with variable severities. Emollients, barrier creams and topical steroid are known to be effective in the majority and form the mainstay of treatment. But in some severe cases or in acute phases of hand eczema, systemic treatment can be very helpful. Among systemic therapy cyclosporine is known to be effect but response rate, remission period and recurrence rate is not well known
Objective:Evaluate the efficacy of systemic cyclosporine in hand eczema patients who are refractory to conventional therapy.
Methods: 17 patients with hand eczema were chosen among the patients who had negative patch test results and the patients who had never diagnosed with psoriasis through biopsy. Patients with contraindications of using cyclosporine were excluded. Response rate were evaluated through ‡@Patient’s satisfaction (DLQI), ‡AClinical examination by a physician (PGA) and ‡BPhotographical observation by scoring using total hand eczema severity index (HECSI).
Result:Total 17 patients were enrolled and among them 10 were male and 7 were female. Average age was 49 and average disease duration was 2.4 years. 13 patients had hyperkeratotic subtype, 2 with fissured subtype and 2 with pompholyx subtype. 1 patient couldn’t finish the study because of the medication side effect (dizziness). Average initial treatment period was 6.7 weeks 16 patients and all had clinical and subjective improvement after 2-4 weeks of initial treatment. (53% improvement in DLQI, 34.4% improvement in PGA, 63.3% improvement in HECSI) But recur occurred in 4 patients within 4 months after discontinuing the medication (average 2.3 months, recur rate 25%)
Conclusion:Systemic cyclosporine can be an effective and relatively safe treatment option in hand eczema patients who are refractory to other treatments, although recur is quite common
Keywords: Hand eczema, Cyclosporine