Doxycycline versus prednisolone as an initial treatment strategy for bullous pemphigoid: a pragmatic, non-inferiority, randomised controlled trial.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Bullous pemphigoid is a blistering skin disorder with increased mortality. We tested whether a strategy of starting treatment with doxycycline gives acceptable short-term blister control while conferring long-term safety advantages over starting treatment with oral corticosteroids.

Methods

We did a pragmatic, multicentre, parallel-group randomised controlled trial of adults with bullous pemphigoid (three or more blisters at two or more sites and linear basement membrane IgG or C3). Participants were randomly assigned to doxycycline (200 mg per day) or prednisolone (0·5 mg/kg per day) using random permuted blocks of randomly varying size, and stratified by baseline severity (3-9, 10-30, and >30 blisters for mild, moderate, and severe disease, respectively). Localis

SUBMITTER: Williams HC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5400809 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature