Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic inflammatory disease of the central nervous system which is accompanied by considerable disability and high costs. This report summarises the evidence on effectiveness and costs of beta-interferons and natalizumab in the treatment of multiple sclerosis.The review included systematic reviews and randomised controlled trials (with an observation time of at lea...

INTRODUCTION A variety of cutaneous reactions have been described in patients receiving tumor necrosis factor alfa (TNF-a) inhibitors. Of particular interest in this scenario is the development of lichen planus and lichen planuselike eruptions. Because TNF-a is recognized as a significant factor in the induction of these dermatoses, their appearance after inhibition of TNF-a is perplexing. The ...

BACKGROUND/AIMS Hepatitis C virus infection remains prevalent among patients undergoing long-term haemodialysis and has a detrimental impact on survival in this population. Antiviral therapy for chronic hepatitis C in haemodialysis patients is still a challenge to clinicians. The aim of the current study is to evaluate the efficacy and safety of therapy with pegylated interferon, alone or combi...

A 60-year-old woman, who had been diagnosed with and treated for Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada (VKH) disease 17 years before, was receiving pegylated interferon-? and ribavirin therapy for chronic hepatitis C virus. Three weeks after the start of therapy, she complained of visual blurring, eye pain, and an increased hearing loss. Based on a slit lamp and fundus examination, she was diagnosed with a rela...

UNLABELLED INTRODUCTION With the increasing use of recombinant α and β interferon therapy for the treatment of various disorders, cases of interferon-associated sarcoidosis have been reported in the literature. The majority of these have been cases of interferon-α-induced sarcoidosis. We present the first case, to the best of our knowledge, of interferon-induced pulmonary sarcoidosis in a pa...

Patients with hairy cell leukemia (HCL) and chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) were treated with recombinant interferon alpha A (rIFN-alpha A). The binding of iodinated recombinant interferon-alpha to baseline samples of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from the leukemia patients was compared with clinical responsiveness to rIFN-alpha A. HCL patients (8/10) responded to rIFN-alpha A t...

Prognosis of patients with carcinoma of the exocrine pancreas is particularly poor. A combination of chemotherapy with immunotherapy could be an option for treatment of pancreatic cancer. The aim of this study was to perform an immunomonitoring of 17 patients with pancreatic cancer from the CapRI-2 study, and tumor-bearing mice treated with combination of chemo (radio) therapies with interferon...

OBJECTIVES To confirm that neutralizing antibodies (NAb) to interferon beta can persist after therapy withdrawal and to evaluate whether persisting NAb are associated with a worse clinical disease course in multiple sclerosis (MS). DESIGN Retrospective study. SETTING Tertiary referral center in The Netherlands. PATIENTS A total of 71 patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis tr...