Article Text
Abstract
Cutaneous lupus erythematosus (CLE) is a disfiguring and potentially disabling disease that causes significant morbidity in patients. Antimalarials are an important class of medication used to treat this disease and have been the first-line systemic therapy since the 1950s. Quinacrine, in particular, is used as an adjuvant therapy to other antimalarials for improved control of CLE. Quinacrine is currently unavailable in the USA, which has taken away an important component of the treatment regimen of patients with CLE. This paper reviews the evidence of available local and systemic therapies in order to assist providers in choosing alternative treatments for patients who previously benefited from quinacrine therapy.
- autoimmune diseases
- lupus erythematosus
- systemic
- methotrexate
This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Footnotes
Contributors DY and RB contributed to the design, drafting, revision and final approval of the manuscript. RDS and VPW contributed to the concept, design, drafting, revision and final approval of the manuscript. DY and RB contributed equally and should be considered cofirst authors.
Funding VPW received funding from the National Institutes of Health (R01AR071653). RDS received funding from the National Instiutes of Health (R01AR19101). These funders had no involvement in the design, writing or submission of this paper.
Competing interests DY, RB and RDS have nothing to disclose. VPW reports personal fees from Genentech, Medimmune, Amgen, Resolve, Lilly, Principia, BMS, AC, Nektar, EMD Serona, Astra Zeneca, Vielo, Abbvie, Kyowa Kirin, GSK and Cugene, outside the submitted work; grants and personal fees from Biogen, Gilead, Celgene and Janssen; in addition, VPW has patents Cutaneous Lupus Erythematous Disease Area and Severity Index and CDASI with royalties paid.
Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, conduct, reporting or dissemination plans of this research.
Patient consent for publication Not required.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Data availability statement No additional data are available.