A safer long term treatment for blistering skin disease

A clinical trial into the treatment of the severe blistering skin condition ‘bullous pemphigoid’ has found that starting treatment with an oral antibiotic is an effective and safer alternative to the current standard  treatment of oral steroids which can have harmful long-term side effects. 

The study was led by skin experts at The University of Nottingham’s Centre of Evidence Based Dermatology. The results of the NIHR-funded BLISTER trial are published in The Lancet. 

Bullous pemphigoid (BP) is an auto-immune disease which means that the immune system mistakenly makes antibodies against parts of the patient’s skin. This causes an itchy rash and blisters anywhere on the body which can become infected if they burst.