Treatment of polymorphous light eruption

✍ Scribed by F. Gschnait; T. Schwarz; I. Ladich

• Book ID: 104766736
• Publisher: Springer-Verlag
• Year: 1983
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 307 KB
• Volume: 275
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0340-3696
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00417337

✦ Synopsis

This study was designed in order to prove on a large-scale basis the efficacy of oral photochemotherapy (PUVA) in the prevention of polymorphous light eruption (PLE), to work out indication criteria for PUVA treatment of this disease, and to establish a simple method based on anamnestic data to differentiate UVA from UVB induced PLE. The results obtained in 106 PLE patients (85 UVA-, 21 UVBinduced) demonstrate that:l) time consuming phototesting for determination of the disease's action spectrum is unnecessary for practical purposes; 2) PUVAinduced tanning under routine conditions represents a potent prophylaxis even in severe cases of PLE ; and 3) topical sunscreens ("sunblockers") in the majority of cases are sufficient to protect UVB-promoted PLE, but fail in UVA-induced disease. PUVA thus seems the treatment of choice only in UVA-mediated PLE, the action spectrum of the disease at least in most cases being easily discovered from certain anamnestic data.