BACKGROUND Bath-PUVA-photochemotherapy has become a useful alternative to oral PUVA therapy due to a number of advantages over systemic PUVA, for example, no ophthalmologic risk and nausea, and a lower cumulative UVA doses. However, its major disadvantage is the logistical requirement for bath tubs in practice and some patients feel uncomfortable to share the same bath with others. Topical psor...

Extracorporeal photochemotherapy is a new form of immunotherapy which involves the extracorporeal photoinactivation of peripheral blood cells by 8-methoxypsoralen in the presence of ultraviolet A irradiation, followed by readministration of the cells. To explore the efficacy of this therapy in the treatment of autoimmune disease, four patients with a lengthy history of corticosteroid and immuno...

background: different investigation showed that 5-methoxypsoralen and 8- methoxypsoralen reduce birth rates in the rats. objective: in this study we worked out the effect of methoxsalen together with ultraviolent a (uva) radiation on mature balb/c mice spermatogenesis. materials and methods: the ld50 standard was determined 160 mg/kg and the uva dose which causes erythema was calculated 0.046 j...

The present study was designed to evaluate the effect of 8-methoxypsoralen (8-MOP) activated with visible light (419 nm) on the suppression of smooth muscle cell (SMC) proliferation in vitro. We hypothesize that if visible light (VL) instead of UVA is used to photoactivate 8-MOP, cytotoxic 8-MOP-DNA cross-link formation can be minimized. Bovine aorta SMCs (2 x 10(4)/cm2) were incubated with 8-M...

Palmoplantar psoriasis is a chronic disease, which is very resistant to treatment and often leads to severe disabilities. Photochemotherapy employing psoralens combined with UVA irradiation (PUVA) is a well-accepted therapy for palmoplantar psoriasis. Its topical application (bath PUVA; cream PUVA) avoids the typical side effects of orally applied psoralens. We compared the efficacy of cream PU...

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BACKGROUND Progressive macular hypomelanosis is a common dermatosis in various continents. Its cause is unknown and proposed treatments have had little effect. OBJECTIVES To determine epidemiological aspects of progressive macular hypomelanosis in patients referred to a phototherapy clinic between 1997 and 2008 and to evaluate therapeutic response to PUVA (psoralen + UVA) photochemotherapy or...

Sir, Netherton syndrome (NS) is a rare autosomal recessive disorder of keratinization. It is caused by a mutation of the SPINK5 gene that encodes a multidomain serine protease inhibitor (LEKTI) predominantly expressed in epithelial and lymphoid tissues (1). Clinical presentation is characterized by the triad of (i) ichthyosis, i.e. ichthyosis linearis circumflexa (ILC) and/or congenital ichthyo...

Compared to standard treatments for various diseases, photochemotherapy and photo-dynamic therapy are less invasive approaches, in which DNA photocleavers represent promising tools for novel "on demand" chemotherapeutics. A series of p-nitrobenzoyl and p-pyridoyl ester conjugated aldoximes, amidoximes and ethanone oximes were subjected to UV irradiation at 312 nm with supercoiled circular plasm...

In Europe, ultraviolet (UV) B phototherapy is being increasingly used for the treatment of skin disease. While this is in part due to an increased awareness of the cancer risks of photochemotherapy (PUVA) there is also evidence that a ‘new’ UVB phototherapy source (TL-01) is more effective than conventional broadband UVB sources, and is possibly as effective as PUVA. A working party of the Brit...