Related Experiment Videos
Local treatment of chronic cutaneous leg ulcers with recombinant human granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating
L Bianchi1, A Ginebri, J H Hagman
1Department of Dermatology, Tor Vergata University of Rome, Italy, Ospedale S. Eugenio, Piazzale dell'Umanesimo 10, 00144 Rome, Italy. luca.bianchi@uniroma2.it
Aim:
To test the efficacy and safety of recombinant granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (rHuGM-CSF) in the treatment of chronic cutaneous leg ulcers.
Methods:
Five patients with chronic cutaneous leg ulcers were recruited for this 4-month study using only rHuGM-CSF to treat the ulcers. One patient had a neuropathic-diabetic ulcer, and four had long-standing vascular leg ulcers.
Results:
The patient with the neuropathic diabetic ulcer showed complete healing after 1 month of treatment. The other four patients with vascular leg ulcers with a long history of ulceration had a poor prognosis for healing. The first, with three venous ulcerative lesions, presented complete resolution of one ulcer and stabilization of the other two; the second and third patients, with large vascular ulcers, improved with more then 50% reduction of the mean diameter of the ulcers; the fourth patient, with one large venous ulcer, did not show any improvement.
Conclusions:
Pathogenesis, size and duration of the ulcers seemed to be the most important parameters regarding wound repairing capability of rHuGM-CSF. None of the ulcers increased in size and none of the patients developed clinical side-effects or peripheral blood cell count abnormalities during the treatment. All the results described were stable after 6 months of follow up. The absence of peripheral leucocyte count variation and the size-dependent therapeutic effect indicate that the drug exercises local rather than systemic actions.