Review: Uveitis and immunosuppressive drugs

Uveitis, inflammation of the rye, is a common occurring disease resulting f rom a wide variety or traumatic and immunogenic insults and, in most cases, can be treated successfully by corticosteroids. However, corticosteroids h ave severe side effects. Alternative therapy is using nonsteroidal anti-inf lammatory agents like indomethecin, diclofenac and flurbiprofen. The uveiti c cases are prominent in the third world countries, and many of the patient s al e not responsive or become refractory to steroidal or nonsteroidal the rapy. Therefore, there is another class of compounds "immunosuppressive dru gs" found to be successful in treating uveitis. These include cyclosporin A , tacrolimus. and sirolimus. However, being immunosuppressive they also hav e side effects. Therefore, the effective therapy with lower side effects is the treatment with combination of these drugs in lower dosages. Cyclospori n A plus sirolimus or tacrolimus in threshold doses alleviate signs of uvei tis with lower incidence of side effects.