Comparison of the efficacy and safety of topical timolol and oral propranolol for the treatment of Superficial Infantile Haemangiomas

Background: Infantile haemangiomas (IHs) are the most common vascular tumours of infancy. In recenttime oral propranolol has achieved great success in treating IHs. To minimize the systemic side events caused by oral propranolol, topical timolol started to be applied in the treatment of IHs, especially for superficial lesions. Methods: We treated 50 children with superficial IHs using oral propranolol on 25 patients and, topical timolol on 25 patients and investigated the efficacy and safety of the two treatment patterns. Results: Both oral propranolol and topical timolol achieved a satisfactory therapeutic outcome, with an effective response rate of 96 and 95.4%, respectively. No significant differences in visual analogy scale (VAS) improvement between the two groups were observed. Systemic adverse events for patients treated with oral propranolol (3.9%) was significantly higher than that for patients treated with topical timolol. Clinical response was not associated with gender, duration of treatment, lesion location, lesion size, and gestational age but closely associated with age at treatment initiation, which indicated that younger age at treatment initiation predicted for a better regression rate. Conclusion: Topical timolol could be the first-line therapy for superficial IHs because of its good efficacy and improved safety profile.

Problems associated with clinical trials of Ayurvedic medicines / Problemas associados com ensaios clínicos de medicamentos Ayurvédicos

Herbal drugs have been used since ancient times as medicines for the treatment of various diseases. Especially in countries like India many of herbal drugs and formulations are used in different practices of treatment like Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani. It is estimated that about 25 percent of all modern medicines are directly or indirectly derived from plants sources. The contribution of developing countries in global herbal business is very poor due to lack of quality control and standardization measures. There is lack of common standards and appropriate methods for evaluating Traditional Medicine to ensure the safety, efficacy and quality control. This indicates the importance and necessity to develop a standard operational procedure for the standardization of herbal drugs and formulations. Benchmarking the evaluation protocols including both quality control and quality assurance of herbal drugs would play a major role in providing highly reliable and effective herbals drugs and to attract international trade, thus generating revenue. The article highlights various problems being faced by developing countries and suggests a unique approach for the preparation of SOP/guidelines for the standardization of all herbal based formulations, also there is a need for systematic clinical trials of traditional plant based medicines to enhance global acceptance