Cyclosporin A in the treatment of severe Behcet's disease

Ten male patients with sight threatening ocular involvement of Behcet's disease have been treated with Cyclosporin A for one year. These patients have been selected from a group of 38 Egyptian patients with behcet's disease. All selected cases had shown no adequate response to prior cyclophosphamide and/or corticosteroid therapy All patients under study responded to Cyclosporin. A therapy with improvement of the ocular stigmate as well as the systemic features of the disease. No major sustained side effects have been manifested during the course of therapy with no effects on haematopoiesis of organ functions. Thus, the effectiveness of therapy with Cyclosporin A in Behcet's disease is exceptionally significant when considering both safety and efficacy

Study of HLA-A, -B and - C specificities in patients with diabetic retinopathy associated with insulin dependent diabetes mellitus

The controversy in relation to the presence of a possible association of some HLA specificities with the occurrence of diabetic retinopathy in patients with insulin dependent diabetes, mellitus [IDDM], together with the well established diversity of HLA antigens frequencies associated with IDDM in different populations, raised the importance of determining HLA-A,B and -C specificities in patients with diabetic retinopathy in the Egyptian population. The study has been carried out on twenty patients with IDDM with different stages of diabetic retinopathy, twenty patients with IDDM without retinopathy matched for age, sex and duration of the disease as the previous group and thirty healthy control subjects matched for age, sex and ethnic origins as patients included in the study. Histocompatibility testing by the microlymphocytotoxicity assay was done for determination of HLA-A, -B end -C specificities. The results of the present work showed that insulin dependent diabetics with retinopathy had increased frequency of HLA-B18 antigen which was statistically significant. HLA-Bw35 antigen was absent in patients with retinopathy, suggesting that this allele may confer a protective effect. The diabetics with proliferative retinopathy had significantly increased frequency of HLA-B8 and B18. These findings reinforce the view of the genetic contribution to the pathogenesis of diabetic retinopathy