[Therapy of bullous pemphigoid with erythromycin]

Bullous pemphigoid is the most common autoimmune mediated bullous disease in men. Erythromycin combined with a low dose methylprednisolone was tested in eleven patients in a prospective study. A historical collective of the last 33 patients treated before this study was started served as the control group. The duration of hospitalization as an expression of therapeutic response, but also of lowered side effects dropped down from 43 to 33 days in the erythromycin treated group. The study further shows a responder rate of about two thirds of the patients, one third, however, required a high dose regimen of corticosteroids in order to ameliorate. From this could be concluded, that two different subtypes of bullous pemphigoid exist concerning their therapeutic response.