The role of intravenous immunoglobulin in treatment of mucous membrane pemphigoid: A review of literature

Background: Mucous membrane pemphigoid (MMP) is considered an autoimmune blistering disease that predominantly affects mucous membranes. Various treatments are available for controlling the diseases, but not all of them may respond.

Materials and methods: PubMed and Google Scholar were searched for all the associated studies until 2015, using the keywords such as "cicatricial pemphigoid" or "ocular pemphigoid" or "mucous membrane pemphigoid" or "MMP" and "intravenous immunoglobulin" or "IVIg" to find all the relevant studies. The last search update was for September 2, 2015. Among the searched items, only English studies were included in the review.

Results: After excluding nonrelevant studies, 13 studies with a total number of seventy patients with MMP who were under treatment with IVIg were analyzed. The 65 patients responded completely, one did not respond, two had partially responded, and the remaining two patients stopped IVIg therapy, which resulted in ocular cicatricial pemphigoid progression. Majority of the studies reported mild adverse effects while two of them did not report any unwanted side effect. The most common side effect was headache, followed by nausea. Most of the patients who had a cessation of IVIg therapy before achieving clinical remission experienced the disease progression.

Conclusion: Overall, it can be concluded that IVIg therapy was very helpful in treatment of MMP patients who did not respond to conventional therapy or stopped using them for various side effects. Adverse effects associated with IVIg therapy were considerably lower than conventional therapy that can lead toward treatment with this agent in patients who suffer from severe side effects.