A novel therapy for the treatment of pyoderma gangrenosum

Pyoderma gangrenosum (PG) is an uncommon, chronic, painful, ulcerative skin disease of unknown origin, often associated with systemic diseases including inflammatory bowel disease, rheumatoid arthritis; monoclonal gammopathy, hepatitis and myeloproliferative disorders. The mainstay of therapy for PG has been high-dose corticosteroids but not all patients have a favourable outcome. Other systemic agents have also been used such as cyclosporine, azathioprine, cyclophosphamide and tacrolimus. However, all these systemic therapies can be complicated by serious side effects. In this paper, we report a series of four patients with pyoderma gangrenosum treated successfully with topical cyclosporine. No side-effects were observed in any of the patients and there was minimal systemic absorption of the topical cyclosporine.