United States: A rare and really very dangerous skin infection, which starts as a rash and causes the skin to blister and peel off, may soon have a cure. This infection can affect more than 30 percent of the skin, starting with the face and chest, and can be very serious.
It can all start with infections, organ failure, and pneumonia soon. In the third of all cases, it proves fatal. Recovery for those who survive can take months and is usually similar treatment as burn victims require.
It’s an immune response to medication, called toxic epidermal necrolysis, and while it thankfully is super rare affecting a million or 2 per year, it’s unpredictable when it’s going to strike.
TEN is associated with more than 200 medications, can be generalized to all age groups and all ethnic groups, but the incidence is much higher in females: 100 times more likely in patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
As Reported by Science alert, biochemists from the Max Planck Institute in Germany, working on an international team, now say they have cured seven patients with TEN or some milder form of the infection — Stevens–Johnson syndrome (SJS). Patients on none of the therapies reported side effects.
One of the patients was a 59-year-old man who had lung cancer treated and then developed TEN encompassing 35 percent of his body. His predicted mortality risk was 60 percent.
When he took a new immune inhibitor, his infection stopped progressing. After 16 days he was almost fully healed.
Instead, JAK inhibitors (JAKi) — the class of drugs — appear to suppress an overactive immune pathway.
“The work already has helped to save the lives of numerous number of patients,” says biomedical researcher Holly Anderton from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Australia, who is ‘beyond proud’ of this outstanding research collaboration.
“It was so rapid and it was so powerful, that I think we unlocked a cure for this condition,” said Dr. Elliott.